Many people in rural West Africa are without access to the health care services we benefit from in North America. FFASE (Formation des Formateurs et Animateurs de Sante dans les Eglises or Training Program for Health Worker Trainers and Health Workers in the Churches) was begun in 1998 as a practical extension of the work of the Centre de Sante Bethesda clinic in Cotonou, Benin. This clinic had been established in 1990 by a coalition of protestant churches in West Africa with help from the Mennonite Board of Missions. EPIC began giving support to FFASE in 2000, and since that time the program has trained both animateurs, health care workers, and formateurs, persons capable of training new health care workers. Churches of many denominations are participating in the program, with the goal of having a Health Promoter within each participating congregation. Trainees have been able to impart their knowledge and share resources with hundreds of rural families both within and outside of their church communities. The FFASE training consists of 64 sessions conducted over an 8-month period, with the last two months devoted to practical training.

FFASE's goals for each trainee include improving the understanding of illnesses and how they are transmitted; improving understanding of the relationship between health and the environment; developing the ability to analyze the sources of existing community health problems and ways that these problems might be prevented or mitigated; encouraging taking responsibility for the health of their families and communities; and integrating the physical and spiritual aspects of health into the training at all levels of the program. EPIC's support of FFASE has been primarily for the purchase of teaching materials, including copies of Where There Is No Doctor in French for trainees and photocopies of teaching exercises. Through encouraging organizations like FFASE, EPIC is able to support grassroots-level health care and disease prevention-important components of sustainable and hopeful communities.

In September 2003 the Centre de Sante Bethesda clinic reorganized creating SARFor. FFASE now is the arm of SARFor with the responsibility for training. In addition to training new health promoters, FFASE will be doing follow-up work with the more than 200 in community health animators it has trained from the villages and towns of Benin.

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