Gadyen Dlo Training "Graduation"

On Wednesday, we completed our Gadyen Dlo employee training.  We had the new employees role play as if they were families in their communities, and gave them each hard scenarios to work around.  For example, we had one of them pretend to be someone who says: "Yeah, I know it's important to treat water, but I just wait for the Red Cross to give us free AquaTabs and use those."  Then, the two other guys had to decide how best to handle a situation like that.  It was a fantastic activity that proved fun and functional.  It also proved to Liz and I that they were ready to go out on their own into their actual communities. 

Coconut water break during the last day of training (coconuts from Watson - he's in the background with his machete opening them for us)

I also brought with me a few of the water quality tests Santho and I had done on Monday, and had them guess which sources came back positive and negative for coliforms. They were all surprised that the only water that came back negative was the bags of water we purchased from the coke (cola) lady's little store.  Below, I'm showing them the positive water samples.  They actually were so into to it, and completely grossed out that their community pump water was positive, they requested that they each get one of the positive samples to carry around with them to be able to show people.  We thought this was a pretty great idea, and glad that they were so into it.

After completing our whole water safety/Gadyen Dlo system training, we presented the new Gadyen Dlo employees with CHI backpacks, hats, shirts, and their name badges. 

On Thursday, Liz, John, and I went around to a few houses from each of Rolax, Watson, and Santho’s communities.  This was so we could observe each of the guys giving their sales pitches/in-home water safety lessons, and also so they could get ideas from, and help each other.  It was a great success; in part because at most houses we attracted a large crowd of children who were curious to see the blan—and the guys took this opportunity to get out their color laminated posters and gave the kids mini water lessons while the other one talked to the adults of the household (or cluster of homes) about Gadyen Dlo.