Community Health Guides Part 2: Beyond paper

By: Dorothy Tegeler

Last month, Xinia posed this question, which I believe is a central one for many of us working in community health: “How do we ensure educational processes in the community? How do we avoid what I call ‘a mere knowledge transmission’ and substitute it for real educational processes with the people?”

My colleague at Hesperian Health Guides, Zena Herman, shared some great tips in March about how to make printed materials like flyers and pamphlets effective, relevant, and empowering. You can see the posts here.  I am excited to continue the conversation that she started, shifting the discussion to other kinds of health materials and educational processes – “beyond paper.”

I’d like to ask this community to share some of your favorite health education tools – songs, activities, t-shirts, ways of using new technologies – and why you think they have been effective in your health education efforts. To start us off, I will share a teaching aid that we use in Hesperian materials called “Snakes and Ladders.” Snakes and Ladders is a board game that has been used by health workers for decades and is a fun and interactive way to teach about health.

 

The Snakes and Ladders game works well because the players discuss how the problems and solutions that they land on relate to their own lives. It is most effective when the players participate in making the game, and come up with the messages to include on the board. This way, the “students” become actively involved in thinking about what issues are relevant to their community. But this game is still not perfect.  It is a game of luck, and because of that it can carry the message that our health is determined by a roll of the dice. With Snakes and Ladders or any game, group discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the activity helps to encourage critical thinking.

What do you think about this game? What are some health education materials that you use and what makes them effective? The CHW Central community has a wealth of collective knowledge and experience.  I hope that by sharing ideas and strategies with each other, all our efforts to promote community health can be strengthened.

• What kinds of activities or games have worked best for you?
• Do you sing songs or tell stories?  
• Do you make videos, radio programs, or use theater?
• How are you using technology?
• What other ideas have worked well in your community?  
• What ideas have not worked so well?

 

You can also see dozens of other games and teaching aids in Hesperian’s book Helping Health Workers Learn.

Dorothy Tegeler is an English and Spanish Editor at Hesperian Health Guides, where she has worked since 2008. She has a background in research and organizing, on issues such as rights for domestic workers, migration, election reform, and Afro-Latino rights. Dorothy holds a BA from Brown University in International Relations.