The El Sol Training Center recruits CHWs/ Ps based on their pre-existing vocation to serve their people. Many become CHWs/ Ps because they themselves were touched by a CHW/P. Their vocation is infused with wisdom from a rich history of life experiences. In harmony with the concept of consconcientización, this type of vocation involves a commitment to bring about the conditions that benefit everyday people, even when it’s easier to accept an unjust status quo.

El Sol CHW/P TC recruitment is also based on CHW/P’s degree of community embeddedness (Werner & Bower, 1984) and explains that it is important that community health workers be culturally close to those they serve in terms of geographically, language, occupation, amount of formal education, etc., and to have the basic skills and knowledge pertaining to health issues, problem-solving and teaching in order to facilitate learning.

Emerging literature on positionality provides insight into how community embeddedness is an important piece of CHWs/Ps effectiveness as agents of change (John et al., 2021). It explains that personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands their experiences and the world around them. Therefore, El Sol CHW/P TC capacity-building experiences are designed to maintain and strengthen CHWs/Ps’ community embeddedness so that CHWs/Ps are accountable to, and in alliance with, their community.

The ecosystem of El Sol CHW/P TC capacitybuilding experiences is designed to nurture CHWs/Ps vocations and community embeddedness. In doing so, El Sol CHW/P TC cultivates hope to achieve more just conditions, especially for those relegated to the margins. This hope is the fuel for the struggle toward health equity.

In the next section, we explain how the learning goals/objectives of the El Sol CHW/P TC ecosystem are developed and evaluated.