Background
In March 2017, the PANCAP-K4Health Project hosted a Share Fair for NAP managers and civil society organisations (CSO). At the Share Fair, we conducted a skills building session to introduce online tools that produce visually appealing and user-friendly products. The session was well received and two main streams of feedback was provided: (1) consolidate the skills building with ongoing technical support to participants and (2) support national programmes to build capacity of local stakeholders.
At the request of the HIV Programme Unit of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission, staff of the PANCAP-K4Health Project provided a training session for programme managers and technical officers of the HIV/TB Elimination Project, OECS Commission, and Ministry of Health, as well as programme staff from national CSOs - Loving Care, ECADE, and HERStoire. The training was conducted in Castries, St. Lucia on 14 and 15 November 2018.
The overall objective of the training was to build the capacity of the participants in the use of online tools to develop visually appealing products and to evaluate and improve meetings.
Online Tools
The project staff from the PANCAP-K4Health Project focused on three online tools, Poll Everywhere, Adobe Spark, and Piktohcart. These three tools are all used frequently within the knowledge management-focused project to share information on HIV and evaluate and improve the events happening in the region.
Poll Everywhere
Using a virtual sharing platform, GoToWebinar, Timothy Austin, Communications Specialist for the PANCAP-K4Health Project, introduced the live interactive audience participation program, Poll Everywhere from his office in Georgetown, Guyana.
Woven creatively through the two-day workshop to demonstrate how to integrate Poll Everywhere in an event, Timothy shared all of the details on using this online program in order to gauge participant's satisfaction with an event in order to improve meetings in the future.
Timothy demonstrated how to develop and administer different polls and surveys throughout an event. He also shared how to easily generate reports from respondent's answers, which informs and improves future events.
At the beginning of Day Two, one participant volunteered to give a recap of the previous day by using the findings from the Poll Everywhere survey, administered at the end of Day One. She shared the results of the survey by walking through the step-by-step executive summary that was generated by Poll Everywhere.
This was a very energising and useful workshop for which the tools will be utilised long after the workshop is done.
Adobe Spark
Shanti Singh-Anthony, Knowledge Management Coordinator of the PANCAP-K4Health Project, introduced the online design application, Adobe Spark.
The free online application allows users to create beautiful images, web pages, and videos that can be shared on social media, through email, or embedded on a website.
Participants primarily developed Adobe Spark pages using data, photos, and information from events and reports, spanning on topics from HIV case-based and drug resistance surveillance to the status of 90-90-90 in the OECS. Some participants created Adobe Spark graphics for sharing on social media. Others tested out the video feature and created holiday videos, including integrating music.
I found this session to be very informative and helpful, especially for me as one of the social media persons in my organisation. I especially liked Adobe Spark which can be used as a means of reporting.
Piktochart
Elizabeth Tully, Program Officer supporting the PANCAP-K4Health Project, introduced the online infographic program, Piktochart.
The free online program allows users to create graphical products that can be downloaded and printed or shared online through social media or a website.
The program can be used to create many different products and is ideal for displaying data in a visually interesting manner or helping to simplify a complex idea or topic.
Participants developed and nearly finalized a variety of graphical products including flyers for awareness days including World AIDS Day, a graphical presentation for Trans Awareness Week, a fact sheet for 90-90-90 data in the OECS, among others.
Very interesting, informative and interactive. The tools are functional and we learned from each other. Hearty thanks to Shanti, Elizabeth and Timothy. We look forward to future sessions with the team.
Closing
Using a Poll Everywhere survey, participants were asked to reflect on their thoughts of the workshop and their feelings on the applicability of the three tools in their work going forward. The final question asked participants if there was anything else they would like to share, demonstrated in the word cloud below.
The PANCAP-K4Health Project has committed to serve as a ongoing resource for participants as they further develop their skills in these online tools and finalise their products.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the OECS Commission for planning and organizing the skills building workshop. Additional thanks to the stellar engagement of the participants and to the facilitators for demonstrating the tools.
Thank you PANCAP & OECS COMMISSION for this wonderful opportunity to discover and explore online tools!