How can one person motivate the modestly paid staff of a Nicaraguan health NGO to substantially improve job knowledge and performance? That was the challenge facing Conny Peralta, a nurse-supervisor with Profamilia, her country’s leading family planning organization. She knew that her clinics’ current approach –- reviewing clinic statistics, reporting to staff on weaknesses, and following up with trainings and reading assignments -– wasn’t stimulating staff to break any service records. But how could she shake things up?

The answer came in the form of a PEAK Fellowship. Conny spent six weeks with ProSalud, a non-profit health services organization that is an innovator in staff training and motivation. During this time, she observed and then facilitated a “Knowledge Award” contest that uses a quiz-show format to not only test staff members’ job knowledge but to improve it by encouraging clinics to compete for top scores and prizes.

When she returned to Nicaragua, Conny used her PEAK applied project to adapt the “Knowledge Award” to her own staff’s training needs. She already knew what areas needed work thanks to the results of the previous year’s evaluation. So, she examined the issues that each category of staff member needed to address (including doctors, nurses, health promoters, lab workers, cleaning staff, administrators, and secretaries), and formulated quiz questions for each group.

She then prepared packets of information on each topic and sent them to staff at the various clinics. After about a month, it was time for the first contest.

“How it works,” said Conny, “is that if our supervisory visits revealed a need to improve nurses’ skills in family planning counseling, for example, this would become the contest topic in the nurses’ category.” During their quiz segment, the nurses would be asked questions such as, “name the six steps of family planning counseling,” or “identify three critical audiences for family planning information.” Those with the highest scores would win individual prizes -- such as hats and t-shirts -- and each nurse’s score would be factored into his or her clinic’s overall score.

These contests have been so well-received and have done such a good job of improving staff knowledge and teamwork that Conny’s organization, Profamilia, has expanded the contest beyond the six clinics in her applied project to all of the organization’s 16 service points. To date, Conny has trained more than 100 staff members and has coupled her contests with a new, more transparent model of supervision that together have clarified the way in which clinics are evaluated and supported.

As a direct result of her PEAK Fellowship, Conny has received recognition from USAID/Nicaragua. She has been promoted and now supervises all 16 clinics. She has also shared this training model with other organizations. It is currently being implemented by Nicaragua’s Ministry of Health, and now CEMOPLAF, an Ecuadoran health and development organization, is eager to have Conny train its staff in her methods.