What will you learn?
- Estimate the magnitude of blindness, annual workload and unmet need in your service area
- Plan for your service area and develop strategies and action plans to achieve the goal
- Manage community outreach activities efficiently
- Know the importance of health communication & behavior change for tackling the barriers to service utilisation
- How counseling helps to cope with the large volume
- Apply the concept of social marketing in eye care service delivery
- How Aravind has succeeded in its outreach activities
- Broaden your knowledge on associated programmes like CBR, school eye health programme, village volunteers programme etc.
- Importance of community participation in eye care services
- Help you in solving problems specific to your hospital to improve eye care services
Camp organizers, project managers, outreach coordinators, programme coordinators, social workers, counsellors, ophthalmic assistants engaged in outreach/marketing of eye care services
Working knowledge in basic English
Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology
Mr. Mohammed Gowth
- Those who work as a camp organiser, project manager, outreach coordinator, programme coordinator, social worker, counsellor, ophthalmic assistant.
- The objective of the course is to develop the skills of eye care programmes to partner with the community and thus enhance the number of surgeries and level of eye care services provided to the community.
- As part of your training you will be assigned to a camp organiser during the camp visits and he will help you participate in all steps of preparation and actual organisation of an eye camp, community group meetings and school eye health activities. You will also be exposed to case studies, group discussions, video shows and exercises on problem solving and team building beside classroom lecture cum discussion. You will observe counselling given to the patients in various stages of their stay, training the volunteers and in monitoring the entire outreach activity. This training will be customised to certain extent depending on the requirement of each participant.
- During the course of training, you will be required to develop the entire outreach strategy for your hospital in detail. Such detail will include working out the extent of blindness in your service area, identifying partners in the community, and preparation of both health education and camp publicity material in the local language.This entire strategy will be presented at the end of the training to the panel of course faculty for their comments and feedback.
General Information
Where to stay?
Accommodation and Food:
Inspiration – Aravind international trainee’s hostel is a comfortable and quiet place located close to the LAICO and Aravind Eye Hospital campus. Please see the brochure for Tariff details.
How to pay?
Course fee covers tuition fee and teaching materials. National candidates can pay online on receipt of invoice along with the confirmation / appointment letter. International candidates can pay through wire transfer; the account details along with the payment procedure will be emailed to you by the course coordinator on confirmation of your admission.
Campus life at Aravind:
We recommend that all trainees take a look at Vanakkam – as guidebook to Southern India and Aravind. As you prepare for your travel to India and to the Aravind destinations, ‘Vanakkam’ will provide you with detailed information on what to expect when you arrive. This includes travel arrangements, dress code, living conditions, local weather and local food, as well as information on sightseeing and restaurants in the cities where the Aravind facilities are located.
For International Candidates:
Visa:
A Visa is necessary to travel to India. As your visit to India is for undergoing training, you must obtain student /entry / internship visa (based on the duration of your training). It is advisable to get visa for the entire training period even before arriving in India. Extension of visa while undergoing training is not possible. Tourist visa is strictly prohibited.
On arrival at Aravind:
The FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Office) registration formalities will be done as per the instructions given on your visa page. For registration purpose, the participant should have their four passport size colour photographs (4×4 cm with white background, ears distinctly visible without spectacles and cap). If required, documents should be presented to the local police commissioner office in person. Please refer registration guidelines for more details.