International day of education

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Dr Alison Earley

On January 24th 2021, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the ‘International day of Education’ to celebrate the role of education for peace and development.

“At the peak of the pandemic, schools were actually closed for 91% of learners, or 1.5 billion pupils and students. It then became apparent to everyone that education was a global public good and school was more than just a place of learning: it was also a place that provided protection, well-being, food and freedom. (…) On this International Day of Education, UNESCO invites you to promote education as a fundamental right and the most powerful aid to development that we have. Defending the future of this right means defending the right to the future.” – Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director General, on the occasion of International Day of Education 2021.

Although the focus is often on the importance of educating children, the day also emphasised how lifelong learning can empower people, and is central to meeting the sustainable development goals*.

NICHE International has had success in training nurses, doctors and midwives in resource limited settings, like Cameroon and Liberia, to improve the care of newborn babies. 

Educational levels, language and experience differ among course participants, which increases the challenge of promoting their learning.  However, even when the teaching styles are unfamiliar, the overwhelming majority are very motivated and respond with enthusiasm . 

Most importantly, although training in adult education as a discipline is recent in Africa**, local trainers have been stimulated and empowered to improve their skills as teachers.  These local trainers have taken on teaching their own courses and, while unable to travel, NICHE International is supporting them remotely.

*Education is also a powerful catalyst – for combating poverty and inequality, improving health and well-being, and overcoming discrimination.   UNESCO International Day of Education. https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/educationday

** The Psychology of Adult Learning in Africa.  Thomas Fasokun.  Anne Katahoire.  Akpovire Oduaran PsychologyAdultlearningAfricaViaUNESCO

Peer to peer review and mentoring

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Medical and nursing staff in the UK now have to undergo annual appraisals, usually with a peer who coaches them through their appraisal paperwork, discussing issues and highlights of the year with them and helping them to develop themselves as a health professional.  Although there’s always a mad rush at the end of the year to get all the relevant bits of paper uploaded to one’s appraisal file in time for the allotted meeting, the process if done well encourages the health worker to focus on their goals for the next year, helps to prevent burn out and allows us all the space to reflect on our own practice.

Agnes, instructor in Liberia

This process is in its infancy in Liberia and Cameroon.  Jarlath has put together a draft form which gathers information about skills and confidence decay, provides a method of assessing someone’s on-going competence and allows a structure for peer mentoring.  We are not quite sure how this will work in the field but will be rolling it out over the next few years in Cameroon while we work out how to help support local instructors in the long term.

Click here for a preview.

 

Breastfeeding workshop

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The Neonatal Care Course (NCC) is an educationally robust product.  We teach about the four main areas that the World Health Organisation identifies as contributing maximally to neonatal mortality rates: resuscitation at birth, early breast-feeding, keeping babies warm and early recognition and management of sepsis.  https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/topics/newborn/enap_consultation/en/).  Our feedback forms show increased confidence of learners in all 4 of these areas. Increased clinical confidence correlates with increased performance over time.

Here is Grace, a one time NCC learner and now in-country NICHE champion and convener of their own independent NCCs, delivering a workshop on breastfeeding to local midwives.  This is what empowerment of local health professionals does.  This is our legacy and we are proud of it and very grateful to all who donate time, money and expertise to our charity.

Alison spreading the word in a Scottish primary school

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The children at the primary school where one of the trustees, Alison Grove, works are learning about charities, so she was asked to talk to the classes about NICHE International.

The children are aged between 4 and 12 – one composite class is spread across this whole age range – so there were different levels of understanding about the work we do.

We used coloured blocks to represent babies. With the help of volunteers – wearing our NICHE tee shirts – we counted out how many babies might be cared for if NICHE volunteers spent their visit working in hospitals.

And then how many if they trained local health care workers in the skills they were using so that the work could go on all year round. And finally, how many more babies might survive in good health if the local doctors and nurses learned how to train their co-workers … and so on. That made a lot of blocks.

 

We looked at ways to look after newborn babies:

 Helping them to breathe with a bag valve mask. There were lots of ideas of how to use the one I showed the children, but we soon realised that we would all need training – even the teachers – if we were to save the life of a newborn baby who wasn’t breathing.
 Keeping them warm. The children learned that babies must be kept warm even in hot countries. There were lots of suggestions about how to do this, but no-one could guess the amazing piece of equipment I held behind my back….. a knitted hat!
 Skin to skin contact. We borrowed baby dolls and pieces of fabric from the nursery and the children helped each other to tie the ‘babies’ on securely.

We talked about the different ways people are supporting NICHE – the course tutors, the donors and fund raisers, the work behind the scenes in the UK as well as in the countries we visit.

And there were lots of questions, such as:
How do you set up a charity?
How long does it take to get to Africa?
Why are the babies sick?
Do lions go to hospital?

The children were shocked to learn that newborn babies die so often in poorly resourced areas of the world. Many have baby brothers and sisters of their own and began to understand now how lucky they are to live in Scotland where there are enough well trained health care workers to look after sick babies.