After a needs assessment visit last February and a first training mission in April, a team of four CAC trainers returned to Port-au-Prince in early August to continue with the training of Haitian coaches. This time around, CAC’s team of trainers was comprised of four experienced NCCP (National Coaching Certification Program) Learning Facilitators: Charles Cardinal (mission coordinator in August), Diane Culver, Marie-Pier Charest, and Jean-Marc Normandin.
In the months following the needs assessment visit, CAC worked with representatives of Haiti’s Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’action civique et des sports to fine tune the Canadian NCCP content to the Haitian sports system’s cultural reality. Haiti now boasts its very own coach training program, the new Programme d’État de Certification des Cadres Sportifs (State certification program for sport managers) PECCS! In just nine months of partnership between our two countries, 100 coaches have already received the Level 1 PECSS training, including 25 coaches at Level 2!
Among the about 100 coaches who have already begun their training are representatives of the different national sport federations of Haiti: soccer, volleyball, judo, tennis, cycling, athletics and basketball.
Partnership with Ottawa University – Action Research
From the outset, CAC representatives identified the necessity to archive the entire process of this training mission to properly evaluate the implementation of a program in Haiti. We therefore called on the university near our offices to start an action research project: “The quality and impact of the multi-sport modules of Levels 1 and 2 of Haiti’s Programme d’état de certification des cadres sportifs.” Ms. Diane Culver, professor at the University of Ottawa and a CAC trainer, is leading this research, besides contributing to the training of coaches in Port-au-Prince.
Immediate repercussions
Between the initial training in February and the one in April, we have been able to observe that the coaches have already applied several principles and methods learned within the scope of the Level 1 PECCS training. Here’s just one of the many comments received through our action research from one of the coaches trained in February:
“My country is going through a very difficult period. And it was already very difficult before the earthquake; and now, after the earthquake it has become a whole lot more difficult. If one realizes that we are one single community in this world (black, white or yellow; rich or poor), we are part of humankind . . . And every so often we say that we are helping people, but that’s not true. In that respect, I can say that the PECCS leaders are helping Haiti. Because . . . the people who are going to come out of this training, that is something concrete. It’s unlike something sent for healthcare . . . we have not seen any of that yet. When even one person is trained it’s like an entire family is trained because this person will be able to work to help people within his family and among his friends (others) . . .”
We’ll be going back there soon!
The CAC team is already preparing for the next training visit that will take place in November. We will be very active in the following months as well with training visits planned for January and April 2012. In November we will kick off the program implementation’s second phase, which will consist of preparing the Haitian trainers to operate independently in Haiti to conduct their own training of sport coaches. Stay tuned for more stories from Haiti!
