THE SELF: THE PERSONAL WELLNESS JOURNEY
The journey towards personal wellness must pass through
four key areas: the thinking self, the feeling or emotional self, the spiritual
self and the physical self. Each of these critical areas has its own wellness
needs, and each area is inseparably connected to all the others. It is
impossible to ignore one’s health in any one of the areas without creating
imbalance and ultimately weakness or ill health in the person.
Based on the wellness technologies of North American tribal
people fused with the best that western science has to offer, this four-day
workshop will take participants through an in-depth wellness inventory
that systematically assesses the actual conditions, needs and potentialities
of the thinking self, the emotional self, the spiritual self and the physical
self.
Based on this assessment, participants will be aided to
develop a personal wellness plan covering all four key areas. As well,
participants will be exposed to a broad range of models, strategies, exercises
and resources that can be applied to self-development efforts in each of
the four key wellness dimensions.
Each participant will have the opportunity to engage in
one-on-one personal wellness counseling and training as a part of the workshop
program, and every participant will leave the training with a one-year
follow-up plan that includes a designated wellness "buddy" or wellness
support group.
THE FAMILY: GOING IT TOGETHER
With few exceptions, unhealthy families cannot produce
healthy people. Generally speaking, families reproduce their mental, emotional,
spiritual and physical patterns (or habits) over many generations. The
way we care for ourselves, the way we parent our children, the way we treat
each other, and the things we believe or disbelieve in, cherish and respect
or hate – all of this we pass on to the next generation.
In order to move as families toward wellness, we need
to know what a healthy family would be like and more, specifically what
our family would be like if it were truly healthy. Then we need to know
exactly what our health strengths and weaknesses are (mental, emotional,
physical, spiritual) as families. Finally we need a plan for how to become
more healthy, and a process of learning to get us there.
This four day workshop is for families (grandparents,
parents and children - or any combination that you consider "family) who
want to take the wellness journey together.
Working together with other families through a program
of workshop and recreational challenge activities, families will:
develop a working vision of what their family would be
like if it were truly healthy
complete a process of assessment to determine the actual
levels of wellness of your family in all key wellness areas
learn new skills, models, strategies and tools for growth
develop new, healthier patterns of interaction between
family members
begin to address key healing issues
make a one-year plan for continuing family development
after the workshop that includes continued learning, family activities
and outside support for continued development in all key wellness areas.
Note: This workshop is limited to six to eight families
per session (about 40 people) including children.
THE COMMUNITY: DEVELOPING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
Promoting the health and wellness of communities is not
merely a matter of getting individuals and families to think and act in
ways that lead to health. The individualistic or client-centered approach
to health coming out of the medical model cannot address the following
vital areas:
1.The political climate: Who has power? Who does not?
Who has a voice? Who does not? What mechanisms and processes are in place
to give people meaningful participation in the shaping of the world they
have to live within?
2. The ecological and economic climate: Are people able
to meet their basic physical needs? Is the relationship patterns between
the community and the natural world (the earth) at levels within healthy
and sustainable levels?
3.Social well-being: Are people’s basic needs for true
community being met? Are life-long learning needs being addressed? Does
the climate of the community encourage and provide support for personal
and community development?
4.Cultural well-being: Are the cultures of the community
adequately acknowledged and practiced? Are the values and practices at
the heart of community life healthy? Are the spiritual resources of this
community effective? Are the different cultural and religious groups in
the community working in harmony?
The Workshop
This two day community workshop will take a community
core group and the agencies that work with the community through the following
steps:
Developing a working model of what community health is
and of the processes that can stimulate and nurture the development of
higher levels of community health.
Developing a vision of what your community would be like
if it were healthy (to be further developed through community engagement).
Introduction to a set of tools and methodologies for assessing
community wellness.
Conducting a one day community workshop, out of which
a preliminary community health development needs assessment will be completed.
Developing a community health development work plan, which
will include lines of action, and a learning plan for key players. This
plan will also ensure the following:
What community resources and assets can be built upon?
What parts of the adaptive work to be done can the community
do for itself?
What parts require outside help or action by authorities
or power centers outside the community?
DIFFERENT STROKES
This workshop can be tailored to the needs of a First
Nation (i.e. tribal) communities, multi-cultural urban communities, or
to any other type of community desiring to make community related improvements
in health.
THE HELPING AGENCY
In this wellness and health promotion series, we offer
two key workshops for helping agencies:
1. Retooling for health promotion 2. Evaluation health
promotion programs
1. RETOOLING FOR HEALTH PROMOTION
This two day workshop for the boards and staff of health
related agencies is about making the shift from agency delivery to community
responsibility in health promotion. It is clear that there are certain
very large dimensions of the health picture that cannot be delivered to
people by agencies. These are the parts that people must develop from within
themselves, their families, their organizations and their communities.
For many helping agencies (and especially those staffed by health care
professionals) making this shift requires developing a new vision of what
the work is, as well as new attitudes, values, skills, and tools.
This Workshop Will:
Provide a comprehensive introduction to a set of models,
maps and principles concerning what community health development is and
how it can be promoted;
Help participants to develop an understanding of what
the adaptive work really is within agencies and communities to make the
shift to community based approaches to health;
Introduce a set of tools and methodologies for assessing
community wellness, and for planning health promotion work;
Facilitate the development of a strategic action plan
for making the shift from agency delivery to community responsibility,
including a learning plan for agency staff and board members.
WHY A LEARNING PLAN?
Because unless staff and board members learn to think
and act in new ways that will lead to the newly envisioned outcomes, everyone
will go on as before, thinking and acting as they have always done – which
has always led to the same old outcomes. What is needed is a vigorous and
consistent process of learning how to think and act in new ways.
2. EVALUATING HEALTH PROMOTION
Evaluating the outcomes of health promotion programs has
proven to be an illusive and seemingly difficult task. Many health and
human service professionals, and agencies avoid the challenge of health
promotion program evaluation until they are forced to deal with it.
Four Worlds has a broad base of experience in the area
of evaluating community based programming. From our experience, we have
learned the following about evaluating promotion.
1.The peoples whose health is supposedly being "promoted"
must be brought into the process of evaluation.
2.Evaluation can be used as a powerful springboard for
community education and community mobilization if it is properly facilitated.
3.Health promotion is a process. Most standard evaluation
methods do not evaluate processes. They evaluate outcomes and results.
To adequately evaluate a process, you need a process based methodology.
We find that a Participatory Action Research approach is the most flexible
and best able to integrate the needs for qualitative and quantitative data.
4. Properly employed - an evaluation process can be a
highly effective health promotion strategy - sometimes even more powerful
than the program it is evaluating.
5. Evaluation should begin at the beginning of the program;
not the end. While it is possible to evaluate after the program is completed,
to do so negates the opportunity to adjust the program as you go, and misses
the chance to use the evaluation as curriculum for everyone involved.
This Workshop Will:
Introduce participants to the main issues and challenges
in health promotion evaluation.
Present a set of models, and tools developed by Four Worlds
for Health Promotion Evaluation, along with case examples.
Assist participants to design evaluation or assessment
protocols for specific situations brought to the workshop from the real
life challenges participants are facing in their daily work.
Note: This workshop can be tailored to specific communities,
or can be designed to accommodate groups from many different communities.
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