Title: Environmental factors
Course: Health Education, Advocacy and Community Mobilisation Part 1 - Ethiopia (Full)

Environmental factors

The key environmental factors when delivering your health education messages are the conditions where the learners have to sit to do their learning. Learning is hampered by bad environmental conditions such as distraction, noise, poor illumination, bad ventilation, overcrowding and inconvenient seating arrangements.

Can you think of a time when you had to endure poor conditions to do your learning?

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Most people can remember a bad classroom or a situation where learning was difficult. Often it is noone's fault and can be as simple as being in a classroom next door to a very noisy set of people, or under a corrugated iron roof in the rainy season. Such things can make a learning environment very difficult.

The location of the health education setting, the internal set up, the accommodation, decoration and sanitary conditions are all very important for efficient learning. The organisational set up of the health education setting also influences learning. For example, if you are giving a health education session in your Health Post, and if the room is very overcrowded with healthy as well as sick individuals, some of them sitting on the floor and others by the door, this would hamper the learning among all of the attendants.