Learning the hard way

“A small workshop was given in Osh covering various elements of the new technical manual for the engineers and the result is very positive. A clear methodology for water supply systems has been implemented - this was the high point of the workshop, as everybody actively participated and a wide range of knowledge was shared”

No: not an extract from my latest department report. It is a quote in the handover memo from the last expat who worked with the engineers here before me. To me, it shows how dangerous the thinking of many people working in development can be - that giving short training sessions and handing out new information leaflets is the easy solution to other people’s lack of particular skills or knowledge.

A year or so on from the workshop, the engineers have “designed” (measurements, calculations and diagrams were not part of the process) three water systems, and construction is about to start. If they were built as the engineers planned, two would have exploded (from excess water pressure) and one would have trickled (or perhaps stopped altogether). Some frantic re-designing based on the NGO water systems bible and various emails from experts in the UK means that… well, I’m not promising anything, but fingers crossed at least some parts will work.

So how can you train people effectively so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen? After all, I have attended and benefited from many short training courses myself. Why is it different in Kyrgyzstan? The crucial difference is that if I go on a course, I gain a variety of things: the key ideas and concepts taught during the workshop, but also an awareness of the contacts, resources and support that I will need to refresh and reinforce the course information later - when I actually come to putting my learning into action. Here the engineers were given an incomplete and confusing manual, and no point of contact for the ongoing support and advice they would need.

Training - or at least posing - on better concrete mixing

In fact, some of the engineers did try and find this support - by seeking advice and borrowing equipment from friends in other NGOs (others, in stubborn Soviet style, decided that if something wasn’t worth designing properly it wasn’t worth designing at all). But NGOs need a greater awareness and responsibility to properly equip their staff for what they are asked to do. And this applies equally to the many external training sessions on a multitude of topics (here, better animal breeding and vegetable growing are popular) that NGOs run for their ‘beneficiaries’ around the world.

Some NGOs and donors are more progressive. In El Salvador and India, we were lucky enough to work with local partners who accepted the need to invest relatively large amounts of time in training local builders and engineers in low-cost seismic-resistant construction. Like community water systems, this needs a full understanding of the key concepts and the critical details - and I am sceptical that these can be taught effectively in the 2-3 day courses that many NGOs run on this topic.

We worked with a skilled team of six experienced master builders from different NGOs in El Salvador, and spent four weeks of training in the field to combine theory and practice. In India, twelve local builders (with a lower existing skill level) were trained for ten weeks. Both were pilot projects, the first of their kind to be run on this method of retrofitting and reinforcing mud buildings (see www.quakesafeadobe.net - soon to be updated - for more information).

In El Salvador, we first worked as a team with the builders so they could all learn the new skills and practise them by reinforcing two houses. We actively encouraged discussion, innovation and trial and error, with the mantra ‘See, Do, (Make a Mistake!), Do Again, Keep Learning and Improving…’ (it’s snappier in Spanish). The last week of the course was effectively an exam: six builders, two teams, one more house… and two trainers relaxing - well, writing our reports - in the shade and giving only very occasional advice when requested. Successfully passing their ‘test’ gave everyone involved great confidence that the builders could continue the work with minimal ongoing support.

Learning by doing and showing: builders demonstrate to the engineers what they have learned

India was more challenging. Rather like a Soviet-trained engineer, if a village mason in rural India has worked in a particular way for twenty years, it is unlikely that he is going to change his habits in a few weeks (let alone a few days). Ongoing technical support and the provision of useful written resources are also clearly more difficult in communities with intermittent NGO presence and varying levels of literacy. Our local partner had been creating Masons Associations - sort of mini trade unions - after previous training programmes as a way of providing mutual support among those builders trained. It will be fascinating to see how this promising idea develops over the longer-term.

And this, of course, is the key - long-term, rigorous evaluation of projects such as these to find out if the training courses actually change people’s behaviour, and how. The observations and frustrations above are simply my experiences and impressions from working on a couple of projects and reading or hearing about a few more. But I’m not holding my breath for this long-term assessment to happen in a big way. Back in Kyrgyzstan, we are about to begin a disaster-prevention project that includes… training on low-cost earthquake-resistant housing. We will partner with a specialist NGO that has experience running similar projects in Tajikistan. Each training session lasts a couple of days, and the only practical element involves constructing one small model house. But without anyone knowing how many people actually built a better house after the training ended and the NGO left Tajikistan, I’m not confident that it will make much difference here by the time the next earthquake hits.