How is it possible that the ToT is already done?

The Training of Trainers. It was one of my big mile markers in the march to the end of our Peace Corps service. All winter break I worked on preparing PowerPoint presentations, tweaking the conference agenda, and sending ridiculous numbers of emails back and forth with other Life Skills Committee members in preparation. The 2012 Healthy Lifestyles and HIV/AIDS Education Training of Trainers was scheduled for February 2-3 and sat, marked on my calendar, as a far-off, distant to-do, a big project that needed lots of work and was one of my first big time-markers leading to close of service. These signposts went: January 8, putting me 6 months out from COS; the ToT (as we call it, since the official name is too much of a mouthful to say more than once), right around the 5-month mark; the Close of Service (COS) conference March 5-6, almost right on the 4-to-go; April's spring break that comes around Easter; May's various Georgian and Soviet holiday celebrations that get us out of school; June 15 that heralds the actual end of school; and BOOM, end of service in July.

January 8th came and went more quickly (and coupled with the consumption of more pieces of cake and other calorie-laden fare) than I could have imagined. At least the ToT, my February signpost, was still a long way off.

Until, suddenly, it wasn't any more. It was happening, ready or not.

Fortunately, the amazingly talented and wonderful people that work on the Life Skills Committee with me put in hugely long hours and had everything completely ready to go. We worked and reworked our presentations, gave each other feedback, edited and revised, and were ready for whatever the ToT would throw at us. And throw it did.

Materials for the ToT

Our conference was held in Bazaleti, Georgia, about 45 minutes north of Tbilisi. All the conference participants and Life Skills committee members were staying at the conference center and our Peace Corps staff members and guest speakers and translators were staying in Tbilisi, to drive up each morning for the start of the conference. Or so, in theory, we thought. Wicked wind kept me up most of the night before our opening day, banging metal roofing pieces back and forth and making me think that maybe someone had a whole lot of New Year's fireworks leftover and was passing time by exploding them all right outside my window. The 6 inches of snow that had so pleasantly and beautifully covered the grounds of the conference facility the day before turned into an odd landscape of bare earth and huge drifts by morning. The road from Tbilisi to Bazaleti wasn't spared the drifting. We got our first call during breakfast, letting us know that our PC staff and translators were a little delayed due to drifting on the roads. We decided to aim for a 30-minute start delay for the ToT to give them time to get in.

Beautiful, fickle snow

Looks like people were paying attention, right?

Then the car brining our staff members up got stuck. In a giant snow drift. In a village about halfway between Tbilisi and Bazaleti. Oh, and the doctor who was going to present a session on HIV/AIDS as our expert guest speaker? Canceled. She couldn't get out of Tbilisi due to the snow. Yikes.

Peace Corps Staff, making their way to Bazaleti from Tbilisi

While we were really concerned about how our staff members and translators were faring, stuck in a snowdrift in no-man's-land, we also had 36 PCVs and their counterparts ready and raring to start. So we did the best we could with what was available, thanked our lucky stars for our over-prepared session plans and PowerPoint presentations (which were translated into side-by-side English-Georgian), and imposed upon one of the counterparts to do live translation as we presented. McKinze kicked off our welcome and introduction session and I transformed into our HIV/AIDS "expert" presenter. We were a little nervous at first, but then our preparation work paid off and we fell into our grooves. Connie, Jason, and Jana did presentations all about the Life Skills Program, Stigma and Discrimination and the Health Education Lecture Series DVD and Companion Guide. Everyone did an awesome job presenting and by mid-afternoon, when our PC staff and translators were finally freed from the snowbank and made their arrival, we looked like old pros. They all joked that really they hadn't needed to make such an effort to get there after all.

Presenting...

Day two of the conference was a more technical day, all about behavior change communication and designing projects based on the principals of this theory, but our participants were great. They took everything in stride and were active and engaged throughout. They all seemed to come away with really excited counterparts, great ideas about starting up a health project at their sites, and a lot more understanding of what kinds of projects have been done previously by PCVs in Georgia and what kinds of resources are available to help make these projects more effective and easier to implement. McKinze and I did most of the day two presentations, and by the close of the conference, I was about as close to a vegetable as I've been in the nearly two years I've been here.

The Life Skills Committee of PC Georgia, celebrating the close of a successful ToT

Now, looking back on the way things went, I'm immensely proud of the way our committee handled things. I think we presented a very professional training that gave lots of helpful information and made implementing health projects in Georgia seem both doable and fun. I'm excited to track how ToT participants move forward with their project ideas and hopeful that they learned something useful during the training. Most of all, I'm glad for a (slight) reprieve in the flurry of activity. Not too much time off, though... I've got other projects to tackle and the clock is ticking!