Training without literature. Training manual for family planning instructors in rural areas

This publication contains group participation exercises for family planning courses adapted for illiterate or semiliterate populations in rural areas of Guatemala. Some of the exercises were adapted from an earlier publication and others were suggested by personnel in the Guatemalan Association for Family Welfares training department and other nongovernmental organizations serving poorly educated populations. Various participatory techniques are utilized to make the family planning messages comprehensible and assimilable for the uneducated. Instructors facilitate the teaching through interaction ordering of ideas and creating a framework of shared experiences to fix the messages more effectively. The manual is designed so that the instructors need not use any type of written material. Two introductory sections discuss teaching the illiterate and the use of the manual. Each individual exercise includes a title statement of the theme and purpose the teaching goal advance preparation and approximate time needed a description of the procedure and suggestions for evaluation. The topics of the six chapters are family planning reproductive risk contraceptive methods counseling promotion and referrals and paperwork. The techniques include alternatives to talks or conferences group games cases field visits debates practices demonstrations sociodramas group discussions group work stories and brainstorming.