Image: Xavier Biggs, Monitoring and Evaluation Programme Officer, Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL)

The Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) E-Learning initiative is the organization’s response to the need for capacity development among its staff cohort.

Xavier Biggs, Monitoring and Evaluation Programme Officer at JASL recently spoke with the Editor of the PANCAP Newsletter about the new initiative.

“We wanted to create a learning space that allowed us to do training and sensitization sessions that people could access both live and delayed,” explained Xavier, “We are not always able to pull all the sites together for a face-to-face meeting for a number of reasons and so this is one part of how we would mitigate for that”.

The E-learning programme utilizes webinars, video conferencing, pre-recorded sessions and podcasts as a means of sharing new information or even refreshers. “We will then make that available (post-event) through a centralized online space for people to access in their own time,” explained Xavier, “as a post evaluation, we will tie it to a mandatory number of education hours per staff level that requires members of the team to go in and engage with the material posted there. That component is not quite ready just yet”.

JASL E-Learning is an initiative of the in-house Monitoring and Evaluation Department and was officially launched on Wednesday 6 February 2019. A logo was also created to support and brand the platform.

Xavier further highlighted that the first learning engagement involved JASL’s Medical Director, Dr Jennifer Tomlinson who led a session on “Index Testing”. “We invited our CSO partners, The Ashe Company and Children First Agency to join. This has now added a new layer for how we could also improve capacity across agencies,” explained Xavier, “We are super excited about this one!”