Journal 2 - Monday
Today was an exceptional day. We had a great turn out for our first day of training! We started with an opening talk from Dr. Pablo Velez to give us all (volunteers, community leaders, and developmental team) a great overview of development for the children, and the significance of poverty on growth and development. It was beautiful to see everyone taking notes diligently throughout the entire talk, soaking up all the information. After lunch, we broke up into 5 smaller groups so that we could discuss the updated screening tool for the developmental ages from 2, 4, 6, 9, and 12 months. The volunteers were extremely receptive to the all information and facilitated great discussions in each of our groups!
There were so many great experiences from today. It was hard for me to choose which ones to share. One that stands out was regarding our very dedicated community leader: Victor from Las Aguajes. He and his village have been our Pilot village and have been following through phenomenally from the trainings from last year. He was so proud to be with us again he came fully prepared with his binder for all his kids and tons of questions. He was very excited to see the changes that we made to simplify the screening tool, so that he could complete the process easily and support more children.
The other wonderful thing to see was another volunteer that came back from our training last year. When he joined the group with Kelsey and Pablo to discuss 12-month development, they had the opportunity spend some time role playing and practicing the screening tool. Initially, this awesome volunteer seemed very shy and nervous to be put on the spot but he stepped up and surprised us all. He was able to remember his training from last year and started to building rapport with Kelsey (who was pretending to be a Mom) by introducing himself and asking how her child was doing. Most of the other participants had just jumped right into asking the questions from the screening tool. It made us all so happy to see that the training from last year had made an impact.
Six from the FOB Extended Care Program assisted each group, acting as a practice family. The children ranged in ages and issues of delayed development. It was wonderful for those who had come to learn, to have children and parents with which to practice their newly learned skills.
I am very blessed to be a part of this awesome group. This has been such a great opportunity to learn from everyone here. I am looking forward for the remainder of the week and I’m hoping to make a difference here in Honduras.
Peter van der Heide, DPT,PT