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How Petra Institute is Adapting to Online Training
Since 2018, we have attempted to train a group of leaders of World Vision in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The initial training would be a pilot project for World Vision to familiarise themselves with the content and processes of Petra Institute’s training in light of the partnership formed between the two organisations. However, war and Ebola prevented us from doing so.Again, we planned training for this year, and then Covid-19 happened. The world changed, and with that, we had to adapt our training to online training, without losing our fundamental values of being relational, participatory, practical, and experiential. During June, we started with Zoom meetings, training five World Vision faith leaders of the DRC in the Entering the World of Children Course.
Phiona Koyiet from World Vision International acted as observer
Phiona is the Senior Technical Advisor: Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, Global Rapid Response Team. She also coordinates World Vision’s programme in the DRC.We asked her what she observed during the course, and she responded: “The training, being done virtually, did not lose its content in terms of quality, psychological support, training, and supervision. Looking at what the faith leaders were able to do in the field, how they looked forward and enjoyed doing the activities with the children, was encouraging.”We also asked Phiona what relevance the training has for World Vision International in other parts of the world:
“This training is indeed very relevant as World Vision essentially target children in all our programming. We use faith leaders as our critical way to reach out to children. This is our brand: Christianity and child-focused. So, if we have our structured training simplified like this, it will help us reach more children in a very simplified way, yet on a very high-quality psychological intervention, with skills that can be passed on easily. As it is not very theoretical, it is easy to train people within any level of the community. Parents or caregivers can easily embrace games, play, storytelling, and respond to the needs of children and make them feel cared for using games and stories. Hence, it will help us reach more children in need of basic psychosocial intervention, using already existent structures in the community.”
Petra Institute: Training for multiplication
Petra Institute’s training focuses on multiplication – training trainers to train others. After the initial training for World Vision, we proceeded to train the leaders on how to train others in the skills they have learned.Since then, they have trained 35 community leaders and influenced their own families and people in their faith communities. God is indeed doing great things despite the restrictions of Covid-19!Active partnerships, both with churches and organisations that are working in the context of poverty, emergency, and persecution, are central to our model. We focus on building capacity for children’s ministry within partnerships with church denominations or organisations, such as NGOs.
For more information, please contact info@petra.co.za
