| |
April 28th-29th, 2010 Pengzhou MTOT Practicum on Goat Feeding Management and Disease Prevention was successfully accomplished in Pengzhou. Mr. Liu Chaogang, the Deputy Director of Pengzhou Animal Husbandry Bureau, Ms. Lynda Nicholls, the LTTA, Ms. Zhang Xuemei, Project Gender Specialist and Ms. Wu Jie, the CTA attended the training. The trainers are 8 Pengzhou MTOT team member and trainees are 30 goat producers from HEIFER Foundation Earthquake Recovery Project.Based on the results from Training Needs Assessment collected on April 1st, trainers integrated video demonstration method into multi-media PPT presentation. Based on the PPT presentations with pictures and questions, trainers used participatory training methods like answering participants’ practical questions, showing disease pictures and sharing each other’s experience. This strong interactive learning not only helped farmers to learn goat feeding management basic knowledge, but they also gained some practical disease prevention and control skills and the training solved farmers’ practical problems. This type of participatory training approach was well accepted by the farmers who expressed that they are looking forward to more of this kind of training. The effective training will effectively help them to improve their production level and increase their goat production income.
The creative training method that was piloted this time was that MTOT team made their own barn design video and video to demonstrate injection skills. The trainers filmed some video clips matching local context, and showed the video clips during the training session. For example, trainers showed a video of barn floor slates that were too wide and a picture of a lame goat because of the flooring, and woman farmers who do not read well expressed ‘now I understood that flooring should not be too wide, otherwise it will hurt the animal’s feet, causing big loss’. The trainees also commented that ‘such kind of training will truly attract the interests of the farmers and help them to solve the real production difficulties’.
The training again improved the team building and extension skills. Trainers are not feeling nervous, they become more confident and comfortable. During the 2 month preparation time, every MTOT member contributes their best expertise, time and effort. The hard work received good feedback from Evaluation forms. The Satisfaction level of Good, Better and Best reflects 1%, 12% and 87%. Meantime, honest farmers also pointed that they welcome more training like ‘practical training, on-site demonstration, problem-focused’ extension service. We believe that extension service like this will contribute the development of Pengzhou’s animal husbandry industry by helping farmers to increase their goat production and generate higher income.
|
