Community Connectors Project (Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust)
The Community Connectors project was an initiative created by the Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust to promote greater public awareness of a number of key healthcare issues within the local community. Volunteers were recruited from the primary care environment, and from community projects, voluntary groups and religious organisations. They were then trained to deliver key healthcare messages to members of the public from within their own communities.
My brief was work alongside the health specialists, to run training sessions to equip the volunteers with the confidence and skills to communicate effectively, and to discuss health messages that were often difficult and delicate, with their friends, colleagues, and members of their communities.
Evaluation
A survey of the volunteer Connectors conducted as part of the independent project evaluation found that most respondents rated the training sessions highly, with around three-quarters giving the facilitator (i.e. me!) the highest possible rating. All survey respondents reported that they felt motivated and prepared to be a Community Connector by the end of the training sessions.
Over the course of the project, Community Connectors engaged around 17,000 people – promoting targeted healthcare messages from amongst the ten on which they had received training .