Sharing learning at Health Unlimited

Learning forums: methods for sharing experience

Links

Health Unlimited

»Learning evaluation: ideas and resources on evaluation with an emphasis on learning for the future

Key lessons

Learning from practice

Learning organisations

“See life with a different eye” was the way one workshop participant described the impact of learning.

She was one of thirteen programme staff from Health Unlimited who came together for a dynamic and participatory learning workshop facilitated by Exchange.

The participants, who had not met each other before, work in Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Kenya, Rwanda, UK, and China.

A great atmosphere of sharing and mutual learning developed as participants discussed examples of key issues in their work.

The strong sense of belonging to an organisational family rather than simply working on a collection of projects was one of the positive outcomes of the two-day workshop.

Telling stories

Stories told by participants during the workshop highlighted important challenges in their work and key changes in the lives of those involved in Health Unlimited projects. The storytelling approach was loosely adapted from the Most Significant Change methodology (»See Learning forums: methodologies for sharing experience).

Stories included examples of building community ownership of projects; guiding communities to find their own solutions; building reputation; long-term work to build trust and sustainability; adapting proposal writing to balance donor and project priorities; and combining disparate training into one workshop.

The stories provided a rich and evocative way to share experience across countries and contexts.

How “your” project becomes our project: A story about ownership of projects by communities in China/Burma

“Your buffalo are sick” said members of a community to the project managers of a local project. “Your water tank is broken” was the call to the county mayor from another project community.

The project manager who shared this story described how his project had learned from these experiences and used a different approach.

The villagers in the new project were asked what they needed at a village meeting. They identified safe water as their biggest need because they wanted to reduce diarrhoea and ease the difficult work of collecting water from the well. So a water tank project was started, even though this wasn’t in the original project plan.

Health Unlimited staff assembled the villagers while work was going on to discuss and agree how the water tank would be maintained. These assemblies built on existing contacts through health education work in the village. The villagers now refer to the tanks as “our tanks” and maintain them well.

Health Unlimited provided a small seed grant for the project. Funding from the local government combined with a regular contribution from members of the community who benefit – 1 day to help clean the equipment and 20 Yen per year – helped make the project sustainable.

Building on existing learning

“There’s so much going on already” was the delighted conclusion of the workshop participants.

Staff found they were already engaged in learning and reflection at many different levels within their work, even if they had not previously considered these activities as ‘learning’.

A range of approaches and experiences were shared between countries. Participants also identified and discussed common issues and opportunities for learning in the existing project cycle.

The workshop also highlighted some of the constraints to learning - particularly time, space and resources. Other constraints relate to organisational structures and the way information, knowledge and learning flows and is communicated.

Next steps

Exchange helped to draw out some of the opportunities to build more reflection and learning into existing Health Unlimited forums and activities.

Information on a number of simple tools and methods was well-received. (»See Learning forums: methodologies for sharing experience).

No single methodology or approach was agreed upon, though there was great enthusiasm for the use of stories as experienced in the workshop.

Discussion generated a number of practical next steps that participants were determined to move forward with.

If you would like more information or are interested in working with Exchange to strengthen learning, please contact Rob Vincent, deputy director of Exchange. vincent.r@healthlink.org.uk