The Water Board Training Manual
So this is what I spend the majority of my time on. It’s not really very exciting for you guys in the USA so I will explain quickly. Or as quickly as my motor-mouth will allow anyway…
Basically water is in the control of the individual rural communities in Honduras (the situation is a bit more complicated in the cities) and the water is regulated and controlled by Water Boards who are elected by the rural community. These are unpaid volunteers and are re-elected every 2 years although they can be elected over again. Because these are unpaid volunteers who often know nothing about water systems they have to be trained. This generally falls to SANAA who is the governmental water agency at the national level, NGO’s, and Peace Corps volunteers.
The training is very extensive and covers a very wide variety of topics. And the training is currently largely done by lecture and/or PowerPoint slides in areas with electricity or written out on paper in areas without electricity. The training has proven inadequate as there is an incredibly high level of illiteracy in these communities, it is difficult to change attitudes about cutting trees and paying for water, and there is a high turnover of water board members. I have seen many of the current “training manuals” and they are all lecture-based. Only one of the manuals has pictures and this one was done by my boss in Peace Corps. Imagine being a rural illiterate farmer and sitting through a full day training that was all written words and lecture. No wonder the training is failing.
Peace Corps has recognized the failure of the Water Board training in Honduras and by extension a partial failure of the sustainability of the Water and Sanitation Peace Corps project here in Honduras and so have made environmental education a priority in the project. And this is where I come in. Basically, since I have a background in creating instructional materials I have been asked to re-do all of the Water Board training for Honduras to make it more accessible to illiterate audiences, to promote attitude change, and to include better teaching methodologies. So this is my major project although it is not directly with the communities. And I am getting assistance from a couple of volunteers including one from the newest group of Water and Sanitation volunteers which brings our educator numbers up to…. 2.
I started working on this in earnest a few months ago and have made pretty good strides. There are 22 different subjects that must be covered (according to SANAA). I have a meeting with SANAA in July to go over what I am doing and pitch the new manual to them to be used by the Honduran government as their official manual in the future. So yeah, it’s a lot of pressure but I enjoy working on it a lot. Only problem is coming up with creative ideas, writing them out in Spanish, and finding venues to test them out on (not a lot of requests for training near me). The manual will be very extensive and will include active learning activities for literate and illiterate audiences, will include suggested lecture, will include all of the art needed to do the activities, and so on. It’s a big project. I could go on about it all day but if you want to know more feel free to email me and I will go on ad-nauseum. I’m just hoping by the time I leave enough is done so that people can start using it and another volunteer can continue improving it.
Obviously I don’t really need help from the USA on this one unless you can provide me one of the following:
- Resources on teaching illiterate adults. Not teaching them to read but training them in a specific area.
- Skills in artwork. I am in desperate need of artists to help me draw some of the artwork for the manual. I have a few volunteers helping me out in this area but I need more help. Any artists out there? Help!?! You will be credited in the manual for your work and you will get published!
- Super mad Spanish skills: So my Spanish teachers from training are doing some of the corrections for me but we are talking a lot of documents here and they have 2 training groups a year so often are not available to help me. Many other Hondurans that I know aren’t terribly literate. And my bosses are flat out busy.
Below are a couple of photos of a training I did recently in Guapichilin that was pretty darn fun. I used some of the materials I created and another former volunteer Emelina created. It worked out really well so I’m excited and hopeful that the manual will be pretty useful. Actually, I think it is the most sustainable thing I´m doing.
Rebecca J Williams
Peace Corps Volunteer
H14 Water and Sanitation Project
Sabanagrande, Francisco Morazán, Honduras
Phone: 011-504-9576-2436
Email: rebecca.williams.pchn@gmail.com
