Voices from the Capacity Project

In East Africa, a dedicated midwifery tutor is working hard to train students but worries that she isn’t teaching them the latest information and techniques. Many of her fellow instructors are in the same situation. “We had our last refresher training ten years ago,” she laments.

In many of the region’s nursing and midwifery schools, challenges include outdated information and inadequate opportunities to practice new skills. These shortcomings can mean that graduates’ knowledge and skills may be insufficient once they begin working. “Many nurses who are providing service have never been updated on new issues [in family planning],” observes a faculty member from Tumaini University Faculty of Nursing in Tanzania. “It will be our responsibility to see how we can help as a training institution because we will send our students to some of these clinics.”

To build instructors’ capacity and address the knowledge gaps, the Capacity Project partnered with East, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) Health Community and Africa’s Health in 2010 to deliver a week-long workshop on Contemporary Issues in Family Planning for midwifery tutors in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

In Rwanda, the Capacity Project recently conducted a follow-up assessment on recent initiatives to increase male involvement in family planning and health care.