In December 2002 60 graduates completed the first Celebrating Children course in Cambodia. The original course was organised and presented by a coalition of organizations. It was taught for 2 ˝ days a month over 10 months and cost around 6,000 US$ dollars to run.
Since then the course has trained 180 children’s workers from over 50 organisations and churches and is now being ran for the fourth time.
In Cambodia A team of x working full time, with y helping part-time have managed and presented these courses with the assistance of visiting speakers for z % of the modules.
So whilst running a Celebrating Children training course will always require a small team it is not necessary to be a school or training organisation in order to successfully deliver the course.
When assessing whether or not to run a celebrating children training course consider both your organisation's capacity to manage the course and the potential demand for the training.
How much people-time does managing and presenting Celebrating Children take?
A course facilitator or co-ordinator is usually needed to plan and oversee the running of the course. This person will normally need to have some experience in planning and presenting training courses.
Each module of the course takes about two weeks of full time work to prepare.
Administration tasks require a full-time member of staff, or ideally two that can share the responsibility and cover for each other during leave etc.
During the running of course training sessions at least two members of staff are needed, in addition to who ever is presenting course material.
Who could benefit from the Celebrating Children course?
The Celebrating Children book and this course aim to create a generation of highly trained Christian child development workers. The course is designed to equip people to work more effectively with children living in especially difficult circumstance of loss, trauma or abuse throughout the world.
Workers from child care organisations, churches, schools and development agencies would all benefit greatly from attending a Celebrating Children Course.
A survey letter or questionnaire can be a suitable means to assess people's potential interest in a Celebrating Children coures.
The schedule or format of the course may be an important factor in determining whether people can attend. Because of participants work commitments, in Cambodia the course was ran for 2.5 consecutive days, once a month, over the course of a year. This made it possible for participants from anywhere in the country to attend. Elsewhere the course is ran full time over a much shorter period. In other contexts evening study maybe more suitable.
Other Resources
Celebrating Children Training Course Manual – based on Cambodia as a Case Study