Organizational Development: TRAINING

Currently, Fount of Mercy's Organizational Development Intern, April Mulcahy, is doing a project where she is monitoring and evaluating training. She just completed training on "Leadership Team-Building" and will have training on "Communication Skills" in the fall. The plan is to then offer these trainings again so more people have the opportunity to attend. In the future, Fount of Mercy would like to train Ugandan facilitators who can then do these trainings in village settings. In addition, we would also like these trainings to specialize in specific needs of the organizations with whom we are partnering. The trainings are 4 weeks long, 2 days a week back-to-back for 2 hours each... for a total of 8 sessions. This allows time for the class participants to actually apply what they are learning. In the most recent "Leadership Team-Building" training, April discussed topics such as communication skills, decision making skills, managing self-development, preventing burnout, ethics, developing team trust, knowing the phases of a team life cycle, etc. They did a lot of self/team evaluation. The training class discussed long lasting NGO leadership styles in the Ugandan context. And finally, how to put all that was discussed in the cultural context and how to overcome challenges. The purpose of these trainings and the follow up activities we are implementing is to get them to support and network each other. This is important since Ugandan culture doesn't incline itself to sharing information and supporting each other. But, these NGO leaders love this! So, with each training, April will focus on a group of 4 or 5 from the training and have them get together to discuss things, do a check-in and share hardships and successes of how they have applied what they learn from the training. She will meet with them once a month for 3 months. She will also do a site visit with each of them so they can have feedback on their progress. Lastly, April will host a "follow up" day with the whole class a month after each training ends. This will allow for a class reunion and April will give a general reminder of the power of networking and healthy accountability. We're really excited about the work April is doing in Uganda! Thanks April! Fount of Mercy