Training Modules

by Phil Bartle, PhD

Training modules contain basic texts, model forms, short handouts for workshops, and notes for trainers. Each module has a single topic, with different documents in it for different actors or purposes.

The first five modules contain short handouts to be used in an introductory workshop. Except for trainers' notes, all are included in one document, Mobilisers' Handbook.

Introductory Modules (short handouts):

Getting Prepared, what you need to be a mobilizer;
Getting Started, preparing the community for action;
Organizing the Community, combining action and training;
Into Action, community movement;
Sustaining the Intervention, beyond a single mobilizer;

Intermediate Modules:

Principles of Community Empowerment, reasons behind fighting communal poverty;
Mobilization, skills in moving and organizing a community to act;
Participatory Appraisal, stimulating the community to assess itself;
Management Training, training as a method of (re)organizing for effectiveness;
The Brainstorm, a training process for obtaining group decisions;
Participatory Management, running an NGO, a project, or a firm;
Gender, strategies for awareness raising and gender balance;
Community Project Design, participatory methods to design a community project;
Community Resources, identify and release sometimes hidden resources;
Principles of Income Generation, what lies behind a programme to fight poverty;
Building a Credit Organization, a community organization for channelling credit;
Micro Enterprise Training, skills needed by small scale business people;
Measuring the Strengthening of Communities, how to monitor capacity development;
Monitoring and Evaluation, observing and analysing progress;
Report Writing, how, why, for whom, to write reports;
Poetry, inspiration and insight for mobilisers;
Training Methods, using the material.

Further Modules:

Managing a Mobilization Programme, issues related to the peculiar characteristics of the process;
Community Research, social variables of the community, obtaining valuable information to empower a community;
Water and the Mobilizer, when the community chooses clean drinking water;
Non Material Development; when the community chooses advocacy, civil society, social work, female genital mutilation, HIV AIDS;
Functional Literacy, learning how to write and read through unorthodox methods; design a functional, practical, useful and relevant programme;
Capacity Development, how to strengthen an organization; using the empowerment approach on an NGO, company or agency;
Enabling Environment, encouraging communities to be more self reliant; the political and administrative situation affects their empowerment;
From Disaster to Development, transforming charity to empowerment how to convert your programme from relief when the disaster ends.