In May, less than a year after delivering the first YAM Instructor Course in Gujarat, India, the Mental Health in Mind team returned to Ahmedabad. This time to train five of the local Instructors to become Trainers. YAM Trainers are the individuals who train new Instructors. Instructors in turn are the individuals who facilitate YAM with young people in the community. The process to become a YAM Trainer is long and involves both practice in the field with youth as well as learning the methods and materials of the Instructor Course through a Train-the-Trainer model.
Aakansha, Gauri, Jasmin, Nikhil and Sadhvi were the five Instructors invited to become Trainers – the first in India and Asia for that matter! The work started locally during the spring months through study of the course manual and materials and continued with long distance conference calls with the Mental Health in Mind (MHiM) team.
In May, Amanda, Niklas and Vladimir from MHiM and the local team participated in a four day workshop. In the four days together, YAM was deconstructed, with particular focus on the instructors’ experiences in the field and cultural adaptation issues. Working together to understand YAM from all angles, the group prepared to communicate the more intangible aspects of the program to new groups of Gujarati Instructors. To do so they practiced the YAM method and closely went over the five days of the Instructor Course. All kinds of doubts and queries that the group themselves had about the program and that future instructors may have were discussed and the local team did a great job at approaching the materials with purpose and attention to detail.
The Gujarati team is currently preparing their first Instructor Course and we look forward to reading about it soon in the blog! We will also report more on the extensive cultural adaptation process soon. If you scroll down you’ll find an earlier post with a first glimpse of the adaptation and translation work.
Thanks to Sadhvi, Nikhil, Jasmin, Gauri and Aakanksha for all your work and a fun workshop!
