Group Facilitation Training Aid Video and User’s Guide

The Nepal Family Health Program (NFHP-I) was a six-year (2002-2007) bilateral activity of United States Agency for International Development, Nepal (USAID/N) with the Government of Nepal. Its overall goal was to support the Government’s long-term goal of reducing fertility and under-five mortality within the context of the National Health Policy and Second Long-Term Health Plan 1997-2017.

In response to the identified need for improved group facilitation skills of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) and other group facilitators, and upon request of National Health Training Center (NHTC), Department of Health Services (DHS), under the Ministry of Health and Nepal Family Health Program-I (NFHP-I/JHU/CCP team provided technical assistance to NHTC in designing and implementing an A/V training on group facilitation.

The purpose of the video was to enhance group facilitation skills of the FCHVs and other grass roots level facilitators in order to reduce gaps and enable them conduct most effective meetings at the community.

The specific objectives include:

• To equip group facilitators with standard, appropriate and consistent skills on group facilitation based on existing best practices
• To enable group facilitators to conduct community group meeting more interactive, participatory, interesting and regular.

The A/V training aid contains important elements of an effective group facilitation which starts with preparation for group meeting followed by role play to demonstrating the standard steps and appropriate skills of group facilitation. All the pieces are tied together with a simple and easily understandable narration and was accompanied by an interactive ‘Users Guide’ to be used by trainers while conducting training on group facilitation. The users guide contains tips for the trainers on how to use this training aid in a comprehensive session also with relevant question answers segment and cases for role play. The training aide can also be used as a standalone piece to demonstrate the steps and skills for facilitating a group discussion effectively.

This product has been integrated into the FCHV’s basic and refresher training particularly to complement and supplement the training session on Mother’s Group Meeting. It has also been used by other stakeholders who are primarily involved in conducting group activities on health such as World Education Inc., Support to Safe Motherhood Programme (SSMP) and its implementing partners.

Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/ Center for Communication Programs

Date of Publication: December 11, 2019