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Part One: Developing a Strategic Plan

Putting Your Team in Place

To fulfill the grant objective of training and developing a dynamic team, we hired training specialists specific to each geographic area: urban and rural. Training specialists develop and implement training programs specific to the organization’s or project’s needs and are essential in delivering the training material.

Qualities to look for when hiring training specialists:

1
Previous teaching or training experience.
2
Strong presentation skills.
3
Enjoys working with a diverse range of people.
4
Requires little oversight or supervision.
5
Ability to connect with community members.
6
Not afraid to prospect for training sessions.
7
Comfortable working without a set schedule (some weeks may deliver four sessions, and other weeks there may be no sessions).

Building competencies:

1
Actively engage in co-creating the training materials.
2
Attend different webinars.
3
Share resources with the team during weekly meetings. This allows the team to increase their knowledge and presentation skills.

As with any new project and process, there are unforeseen challenges. We aim to share the challenges we met and the lessons we learned as a result.

Lessons Learned

  • Rural: hire a training specialist that lives in the community they will be training in. They can leverage their local network and community experience.
  • Urban: Hire training specialists that are flexible in the delivery mode of the training and are comfortable hosting sessions virtually and in person. Ensure that you have various trainers located throughout the city.

Tips

  • Compensate your training staff for their travel time and mileage.
  • Conduct a debrief before and after sessions to discuss how best to deliver the training material. By engaging with trainees and learning what course materials resonated best – and which did not – you can modify your approach and create an effective training strategy.

Resources

Throughout The Stronger Together Project, we produced various resources that may be helpful to other organizations.

Sample Job Description

DSORC Training and Development Specialist Job Description

English