JUNE 2001 - DHAKA

Breakthrough at the 3rd Training of Volunteer Trainers

Our team in Bangladesh has developed a new framework for empowering people to take responsibility for their own training and development during the most recent "Training of Volunteer Trainers" (TOVT). The framework, which our team calls the "Training Wheel," is a set of four distinctions within which each participant assesses where she/he stands in becoming a "great trainer" - and then creates a personal program to develop what's missing.

The four distinctions are:

"These four are like the four chambers of your heart" - says Prof. Badiul Majumdar, country director - "you need them all... In order to transform attitudes, we have to provide bridges for that transformation, and we are now creating more of those bridges."

The TOVT is critical to the success of our overall strategy in Bangladesh. We intend to empower thousands of grassroots women to be effective change agents for the end of hunger in their village - working in partnership with men who are supportive their leadership. In order to train tens of thousands of women and men with our intensive 4-day animator training, we will need hundreds of well-trained trainers - which requires successful TOVTs.

In preparing this TOVT, our team recognized that previous TOVTs - while highly appreciated by all participants - were relatively long on knowledge and short on the other three distinctions.

The training involved 24 participants - 12 women and 12 men for four days, who were then joined by the previous class of trainers for a fifth review day. Co-leading the training with their Bangladeshi colleagues were Deborah Protter from the UK and Felicity McRobb from Saudi Arabia. Debbie Marriott from the UK also supported the training. 

Ms. Selina Shirin, the staff member responsible for the training of women trainers stated, "the breakthrough for me is that I felt far more confident. I was able to analyze what was missing in me. I discovered I need to take management and logistics very seriously in order to be a great trainer. I also become far more skilled at facilitating group discussions."

Ms. Meher Afroz Mita, the staff member responsible for women's mobilization shared, "I really learned this time how important it is to appreciate people. I discovered I still held on to attitudes consistent with the service delivery paradigm rather than the empowerment paradigm, and when I saw this it was an eye-opening experience."

Following the TOVT, the entire staff took on using this same framework for their own staff development. The team is also re-examining the animator training from this perspective, to see how it, too, can be made more effective in terms of skill development and attitude transformation.

New trainers from the TOVT: Kajol from Rajshahi

Anupama from Jessor