Just finished my biggest project so far! I organized a nutrition training in my district capital. One was for the staff of the CREN (rehabilitation center for severely malnourished children) and one was for community health agents from some of the villages the center serves. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work!!! Luckily, there are others volunteers in my same health district, so they helped out a lot!
So I’ll start with the training for the community health agents. Community health agents are volunteers from different communities that serve as liaisons to the CSPS (health clinic). They help with vaccination campaigns, health education, and community mobilization. The community health agents are absolutely fantastic in my area! I love working with them. For the training, there were two from each of the four CSPS’s in the district with a PCV, so eight community health agents in total. 
The training was two days on the theme of nutrition. We chose to train people on the ground in the communities because one of the problems now is that there aren’t many referrals to the CREN. Since January of this year, there has only been 14 referrals. Not because there isn’t malnutrition, but because it’s not always identified on the community level and people don’t always understand the options available when a child is malnourished. The first day, they did sessions on nutrition education, identifying malnutrition, and responding to cases of malnutrition in their communities. The second day, they were trained on community mobilization (with the CREN staff) and the FARN (a rehabilitation program for moderately malnourished kids, see What Exactly Do You Do as a PCV). It was a lot of fun, but super exhausting. They did a fantastic job and I’m really excited to see what they do in their communities.
The other training was with the staff of the CREN (rehabilitation center for severely malnourished kids). This one was a little more complicated because it was a higher level (health professionals) and because it was ten days (although just one short session every day). 
The first week, we talked about the proper functioning of a CREN, identifying malnutrition, treating malnutrition and the medical complications associated with it, nutrition education, and community mobilization. The second week, they were trained on enriched bouillie preparation (my counterpart from my village came to do this session), moringa, the administrative responsibilities of CREN, and ways to generate their own revenue. Right now, their budget is what’s left over from pharmacy profits, meaning little to nothing. So this is really important – they can’t function if they don’t have money to fund programs. So we talked about different things they can do – sell enriched bouillie packets, sell moringa powder, or search for outside financial partners – to meet their material needs and be more involved in more activities like education and prevention. The last day, they started an action plan. 
I will go back in one week to review the rest of their plan and help them prepare it to present it to the MCD (the doctor in charge of the district/their boss). Overall, it went really well. I didn’t facilitate a single session – I got other PCVs, a PC staff member, and someone from a neighboring CREN to do different sessions. But it meant a lot of coordinating for me to do. I think that the biggest thing they took from the training was identifying what they want their CREN to look like and what they need to do to get there. Even just getting the four of them sitting in the same room talking about a CREN was a big deal. They all have other responsibilities within the district hospital too, so they don’t often dedicate much time to the CREN. Some of what they need to do is as simple as cleaning and rearranging the room they are in. Some is more complicated, like generating revenue to meet a long list of material needs. But hopefully with the support of the MCD, they can keep moving on what they’ve already started.
One other element was the mural we painted in the CREN building. We painted “the house of nutrition.” They do three food groups here – energies, constructors, and protectors – all of which coincide with a part of the house. I am so glad I worked with other volunteers on this because I’m not artistically talented at all! We included a mural for two reasons – for nutrition education and to liven up the room to make it more conducive to the rehabilitation of the patients. Picture below.
