In achieving its goal of improving the physical and mental wellbeing of refugees and migrants- The Water Well Project’s volunteers need to engage with members of the community in a meaningful way.
All volunteers are introduced to the project through a compulsory induction session. Amidst other useful information presented during this program, around communicating with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, we provide high level ‘facilitation training’, to prepare our volunteers for running health information sessions with community groups.
The best preparation for running sessions with the community is for volunteers to run mock sessions amongst themselves. And while the content of each health information session is flexible, a typical community session would follow a format like this:
- Introduction of the two facilitators to the group
- Outlining objectives for the session
- Housekeeping and appropriate disclaimers
- Getting to Know the Group
- Brief overview on The Water Well Project
- Brief introduction to the ‘Health Topic’
- Opening up discussion on the ‘Health Topic through both open ended and closed questions
- posed to members of the group
- Final questions and ‘take away’ messages
- Participant Feedback
- Wrap up
During the Induction Program we guide our volunteers on facilitation techniques which will help them to run an engaging and interactive session of approx 1 to 1.5hrs with the community. We also invite current volunteers to share their experiences of delivering sessions with new inductees. We believe this introduction to facilitation allows our volunteers to feel more prepared in delivering quality health information sessions within the community.