Last year, we had the opportunity to collaborate with Greenville Technical College in the development of a fall prevention/fall protection class. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA®) offers a grant to create and deliver safety training material. The Susan Harwood grant is typically available to schools and other organizations. OSHA® provides a list of subjects it considers important to cover.
In this list, we observed that fall prevention and protection was very high; Hispanic workers were identified as especially high risk. For a very long time, I have known this and have been working hard to further educate the Latino community; with the goal to reduce terrible injuries or even death.
For me, an opportunity to create a comprehensive yet simple training designed for workers with limited education in English and Spanish was exciting! I very much looked forward to providing an effective training for workers who need it most.
This training has great value and is not free; it was paid by the grant. Often, small contractors are the one with the least number of financial resources to afford such a training. Also, due to their immigration status, many Hispanic workers are unable to take advantage of education provided at schools like Greenville Tech. Through the grant, however, we were able to provide this life saving information to groups that normally would be unable to receive it.
It was a total joy to cooperate in its creation, providing professional Spanish translations of the presentations, training materials, and tests. We had the privilege to teach the course in both English and Spanish. It was the first time that I ever presented a class in front of an OSHA® representative. That was both thrilling and frightening at the same time. It was extremely rewarding to be told that my teaching was top notch!
Challenges however did occur. COVID-19 exploded just as we were beginning our training. For a long while, all in-person training halted. We had to devise a method for remote training. Greenville Tech was also able to request an extension to complete the training because of the pandemic.
This year has been a challenge and through it all, Greenville Tech did manage to reach its training goal for the grant. I worked my butt off trying to promote it and did as much Spanish training as I could.
Nevertheless, I am disappointed that more Spanish-language training was not conducted. It seems like the timing of the pandemic greatly diminished many of the training possibilities on which I was working. Many of the organizations that originally showed support and interest in the training canceled during the coronavirus. Although Greenville Tech was elated with reaching its goal, I am dissatisfied that I was not able to help more of my Hispanic community with quality free lifesaving education. One consolation is that the material we produced will soon be open for free to trainers all over the US. The benefits will be ongoing hopefully for a long period of time.
