Family strengthening refresher training in Fengehun

The CRC led a refresher training as a follow-up to the 2-day, overnight Family Strengthening Workshop the CRC typically holds for caregivers and children from the surrounding villages. These families live too far from the CRC to come to weekly sessions on microfinance or parent-child bonding and attachment.  They participate in this special workshop as part of the Village Partnership effort supported by the CRC, Mercy Hospital, and HCW. The curriculum was co-created by the HCW team and the CRC, and is the subject of research on intervention effectiveness.

​CRC brings together a cohort for the workshop made of family pairs of a child and a caregiver and they all stay overnight at the CRC and engage in highly interactive workshop sessions. The caregiver [parent] engages with other adult members of the cohort separately from the children to learn the same concepts at age-appropriate levels. And intergenerational sessions are interspersed with the opportunity for children and their caregivers to practice what they're learning with one another in a playful way - so that they'll keep "playing" what they've learned together once they go home.

For some of the more difficult concepts, the Case Management team will subsequently visit the caregivers in the village in order to provide a refresher.  Recently, the team visited Fengehun village, where they reviewed some of the financial literacy and attachment curriculum and shared some new teaching on good parenting skills, the need to connect as a community, and how to support one another and access the best available resources as families move toward independence.   

The CRC's family strengthening work combines highly engaging and interactive workshop curriculum specifically designed for low-literacy and the Sierra Leonean culture with highly skilled case management.  Like strands of a rope woven together, these two key components of the CRC's program work together to strengthen and empower families toward their own resiliency and independence.  As families in the village become stronger, so too does their community.