Background Community Health Workers (CHWs) provide vital services during disease outbreaks. Appropriate burials of those who died from an infectious disease outbreak is a critical CHW function to prevent infection and disease spread. During an Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in Beni Town, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, we sought to understand the nature of the community response to the outbreak, the barriers burial works faced in their health work and its impact on local burial workers and other CHWs. Methods 12 EVD burial CHWs in Beni Town completed an hour-long qualitative in-depth interview on their experiences. They were recruited from a local counseling center. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated into English. A team of 3 researchers identified structural and emergent themes using applied thematic analysis. Results Workers reported major misconceptions in the community surrounding the initiation of the outbreak. Community misconceptions were based on widespread governmental mistrust as well as a belief system that intertwines traditional and scientific understandings of the world. EVD burial workers identified violence directed at them and community misinformation as the two largest barriers to effectively carrying out their work. They named several important support systems including family and friends, personal relaxation techniques, and a local counseling center. Conclusions As with other disease outbreaks globally, we found that government mistrust and religious beliefs strongly impacted community perceptions of the EVD outbreak. Previous studies have demonstrated clinic-based medical personnel are often the targets of violence, our research also shows that burial workers were also targeted and exposed to extreme levels of violence in their work. Along with their ability to effectively respond to the outbreak, violence has a negative impact on their own mental wellbeing. Burial workers found group counseling sessions to be an effective tool for managing the stress associated with their work. Further developing and testing of group-based interventions for CHWs is a priority for future research.

The changing and challenging situation on the market place has led many academic institutions to update and upgrade their learning methodologies. This improvement aims at helping learners to maximize their potential and achieve greater performance and become more effective, competitive and relevant in the current Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Coaching has been identified as a strategic intervention in leadership development. This paper investigated the role of coaching in strategic leadership development in the academia. Existing literature was reviewed and a 3-week individual coaching program implemented with an undergraduate student using GROW model. Findings indicated three themes connected with the role of coaching in strategic leadership development including goal setting, action planning and prioritization, self-confidence and determination.

This study investigated the leadership experiences of alumni of the Christian Bilingual University of Congo (UCBC) in the workplace, using a holistic leadership approach as a context, with the aim to learn the nature and challenges of their leadership practices and identify areas of need for leadership development in order to enhance their leadership effectiveness in a challenging work environment. Leadership experiences in the workplace represent both a daily challenge and a developmental opportunity that many leaders face and fail to handle in the current Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous global context. Inaptitude in leadership has been almost always associated with Africa's current miserable and underdevelopment state. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, poor leadership and mismanagement have been paralyzing the whole nation in the last several decades since independence in 1960. This alarming situation has been translated through ineffective political leadership, lack of economic development, social crisis and chronic instability, corruption, injustice, greed, selfishness, duplicity, pride and many more vices that continue to describe leadership practices at all levels. A qualitative study using phenomenological research design described lived leadership experiences of 13 purposefully selected UCBC alumni in the workplace. Data were collected through one to two hours of in-depth interviews and analyzed through qualitative content analysis procedures. Findings revealed nine major themes that emerged through first-cycle and second-cycle coding processes. The themes were discussed along with literature reviews and recommendations made for contemporary practitioners and future research.