How CHE Works
- How CHE Works
- |
- The CHE Model
- |
- The CHE Movement
- |
- External Resources
CHE is initiated in a community by a two- or three-person CHE training team — dedicated Christians who speak the language of the community and live close enough to visit frequently. CHE trainers may be trained, mentored and supervised by LifeWind, a local church, or another organization.
The training team builds relationships with local residents. As they spend time in the community, they assess needs and assets through observation, and develop trust. In due time, they provide information about CHE to members and leaders of the community.
The trainers assure that community leaders understand CHE as a way they can address their physical, social and spiritual needs themselves, not a program that offers them money. The key to CHE is the community's willingness to take responsibility for addressing its own problems.
Through a series of open meetings, the community decides whether or not to do CHE as a community. If the training team has done its initial work well, most communities decide to do CHE.
The community then selects people to serve as their local leadership committee, which is prepared for its work by the training team. Then the CHE program is officially launched by the community.
The leadership committee selects other community members to be trained as volunteer CHEs (chays) — community health educators/evangelists. The work of these dedicated volunteers is crucial to achieving results.
Through frequent trainings, the CHEs are equipped to implement health-improving steps in their own homes, and they learn how to pass along what they are learning in home visits with other families. The CHEs become health educators and personal evangelists to their community.
The combined influence of the training team, the leadership committee, and the volunteer CHEs creates a dynamic process of learning and change in the community. Physical and social health improves, projects are accomplished, and spiritual growth occurs as people come to faith in Christ. The community changes from the inside-out.
CHE works because it is the community's own program, with CHE trainers serving as catalysts for change.
