“The wisdom of the community always exceeds the knowledge of the experts.”
–Harold Flaming
The El Sol CHW/P TC capacity-building ecosystem is designed to build knowledge, skills, and confidence related to selected learning goals/objectives. These learning intentions reflect the El Sol CHW/P TC strategies to foster continuous growth in CHWs/ Ps’ personal development and capacity as agents of community transformation.
To guide the process of prioritizing the learning intentions, El Sol CHW/P TC applies the principles of relevance, reflection and rigor included within the popular education learning cycle.
▶ RELEVANCE
In the context of prioritizing learning goals and objectives, relevance refers to identifying learning goals that are informed by salient topics in the lives of CHWs/Ps and their communities. As community health issues emerge, El Sol engages in developing new CHW/P-centered projects with local community partners. To stay relevant, El Sol CHW/P TC updates existing training content, based on CHW/P feedback, on an on-going basis.
By involving CHWs/Ps in the planning of interventions, capacitybuilding plans, and subsequent interventions, they reflect the direct needs of the community and the CHWs/ Ps’ concrete experience. By addressing the current causes of the inequities that impact their communities, El Sol CHW/P TC reinforces the concept that through collective and coordinated interventions, CHWs/Ps have the capacity to address the health inequities in their communities.
▶ REFLECTION
Evaluation of the CHW/P learning goals is designed as a capacitybuilding process in which the evaluation process fosters deeper engagement, reflection and action. To accomplish this type of evaluation, El Sol CHW/P TC established equitable learner-teacher relationships. The learner is in fact equal to the teacher, as the information exchange between the two encourages learning from both sides. Consistent with the popular education learning cycle, El Sol CHW/P TC encourages CHWs/Ps to analyze the root causes of social conditions in the context of their lived experience. In debriefing sessions, CHWs/Ps bring up what they have learned from their current projects and previous experiences. The insights gained from these reflections are used to identify ways to strengthen the effectiveness of CHW/P strategies and tactics, individually and collectively. To strengthen individual CHW/P effectiveness, El Sol CHW/P TC developed a self-directed learning process in which CHWs/Ps identify and work towards individual goals. To strengthen the collective CHW/P effectiveness, CHWs/ Ps must also identify ways to strengthen the specific aspects of the El Sol CHW/P TC capacity-building experience.
▶ RIGOR
While the El Sol CHW/P TC learning goal development is an iterative process, it is not a random process. The learning goals and objectives in all of El Sol CHW/P TC training curricula are aligned with the national consensus around the set of core competencies, skills, and roles that all CHWs/Ps should possess, the CHW/P Core Competencies Consensus (C3 Consensus) (Rosenthal et al., 2018).
Instead of working on CHWs/Ps certification, El Sol CHW/P TC has embraced the C3 Consensus as a way to assure that CHWs/ Ps trained at the El Sol CHW/P TC are becoming competent in all the relevant areas. The C3 Project is a living framework, developed by CHWs/Ps, practitioners, and leaders, and provides quality assurance guidance in a way that is responsive to historical CHW/P values. As individual CHWs/Ps acquire skills in given competencies, they complete a self-reported assessment to identify their level of confidence in a given competency.
In the next section, we describe how El Sol CHW/P TC facilitators use the learning goals and objectives to create a non-linear, self-directed, and empowering capacity-building experience.