Mikhulu Trust provides training and mentorship to community-based workers who implement the book-sharing programme with parents and families in their communities – we call them “Book-sharing facilitators”.

The community-based facilitators with whom we work are mainly employed by our implementing partners. These facilitators vary in their educational background, from those who have not completed high school, to those with formal higher education degrees. The most important competencies and characteristics that we look for in the facilitators is their passion for and compassion in working with parents and families, some experience in facilitating or engaging interactively with people in their communities and basic reading and writing skills. Our programmes are simple and effective, and with the right fundamentals in place, our capacity building process can support almost anyone to serve families of young children well.

We work with many different types of book-sharing facilitators, including librarians, community-health workers, community-based facilitators and ECD teachers.

A book-sharing facilitator is someone who has been trained by Mikhulu Trust to implement the book-sharing programme with parents or families in their community. The facilitator attends a five day training with a certified book-sharing Trainer, and receives ongoing mentorship and support from a certified book-sharing Mentor for at least six months. At the end of this process, the book-sharing Facilitator is fully equipped, and certified, to deliver the book-sharing programme.

A book-sharing Mentor is someone who provides mentorship and support to newly trained book-sharing facilitators. All Mikhulu Trust staff are trained and certified to be book-sharing mentors, and we provide this mentorship support to all the book-sharing facilitators that we work with. The book-sharing mentor conducts in-person mentorship visits by sitting in, and observing, the session being delivered by the facilitator to a group of parents. After the session, the mentor and facilitator sit together to have a one-on-one discussion about the session. The mentor and facilitator discuss what they each felt went well during the session, and what could be improved for the next session, as well as any other challenges and opportunities that they would like to discuss.

Some organisations may need, or want, one or two of their book-sharing facilitators to be trained up to be book-sharing mentors. Mikhulu Trust has trained and supported a number of book-sharing facilitators to become book-sharing mentors. The organisations who typically train book-sharing mentors are those who have large numbers of book-sharing facilitators, and who want to have some internal mentor capacity within their organisation.

A book-sharing trainer is someone who is certified to deliver the book-sharing facilitor training to new groups of facilitators. All Mikhulu staff are trained and certified as book-sharing trainers. The book-sharing trainer delivers the full book-sharing training courses, in the same way that Mikhulu Trust trainers are able to deliver the training.

Some organisations train selected book-sharing mentors to become book-sharing trainers. Organisations who intend to implement book-sharing with many parents, and who intend to have many book-sharing facilitators will typically choose to have one or two book-sharing trainers within their organisation.

To find out more about whether it makes sense for individuals within your organisation to be trained as book-sharing facilitators, mentors or trainers, please contact our programmes team at info@mikhulutrust.org – or fill out the form below.