Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

The Challenges:

Over these now several months of the COVID-19 pandemic the most vulnerable and struggling communities in the world are experiencing the greatest life-threatening impact.

The massive population of refugees we continue to help in Jordan make up one of the most vulnerable, high risk groups among these communities for contracting, dying from, and rapidly spreading the COVID-19 virus. Combined with the devastating trauma and loss already experienced due to the Syrian civil war, these refugees are now faced with even greater risk to their survival.

• Like many countries, the entire society in Jordan is under a strict mandate to physical distance and avoid travel.
• The more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan in particular are crowded into tightly packed living conditions with no ability to physical distance.
• A huge portion of the refugee population already suffers from profoundly compromised immune systems, fragile medical conditions, low resistance to infection, and general poor health.
• At the same time, the already significantly overstretched health care system in Jordan is struggling to meet even the minimum needs of it’s own citizens, and refugees are unfortunately at a lower priority even for these increasingly limited services.
• Both international and local humanitarian services for refugees in Jordan are also now greatly hindered,curtailed, or simply suspended due to the pandemic restrictions.
• As a result access by refugees to any health care services, supplies, or self-help information on COVID-19 monitoring, treatment, and mitigation is severely limited, and in many cases nonexistent.

What this now leads to is the danger that this entire population is on the verge of an eruption of COVID-19 cases, death, and transmission to many more, both within the refugee community and the surrounding region. As such, this threatens to produce a humanitarian catastrophe of even higher proportions than we are witnessing today.

What We Are Doing With The Help Of Donors To Meet This New Level Of Challenge:

In the midst of this pandemic among the most at-risk community in Jordan, and in addition to our on-going psychosocial trauma healing services, health and safety knowledge - and particularly specialized medical assessment, guidance, and instruction personally tailored to individual and family conditions and symptoms - is currently the most powerful asset we have at our disposal. The task has been getting this assistance to those in most need in time for them to benefit from it and help slow the virus.

An effective way we are using to achieve this is through relying more on tele-health. For several years we have already been providing a portion of our assistance as tele-health services in addition to our on-site, face to face assistance. To meet the increased challenges of the pandemic we are now working to rapidly and significantly ramp up our existing tele-health ability by setting up an expanding network of live virtual stations throughout Jordan in apartment buildings, large group homes, and camps where large numbers of refugees are already forced to live in compressed quarters, and where critical life-saving tele-health services can still immediately and regularly reach them.

The services are staffed by our international team of expert health care professionals, our local treatment team, and our large pool of hundreds of local trainees who are medical students and professionals. This is a coordinated virtual treatment, health education, guidance, and psychosocial support system in regions of Jordan with the highest concentration of refugees.

We are currently concentrating on sites in Amman and Irbid, and hope to continue adding sites in these and other regions of Jordan. Each virtual station allows a large number of people to access health care and support. With the critical financial support of generous donors we are purchasing and putting the required computer and internet technology and basic medical self-monitoring equipment in place that is needed to establish as many of these live virtual stations in as many of these compacted population centers as possible to maintain contact, provide health care service, and ensure life-saving help continues to reach refugee children and their families in desperate need.

Links:

• Details at our nonprofit partner's site: Common Bond Inst.
• IHPA Contact Email for inquiries: SOlweean@aol.com

The latest upsurge in war violence against civilian populations in Iblib and other areas of Syria is adding to the tragic humanitarian crisis and resulting in additional hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing for their lives, most facing a dangerous odyssey on foot through winter. Once again Jordan is receiving these refuges and adding to the massive number of refugees it is already struggling to care for and protect.

In the midst of this rising challenge, our trauma healing programs and treatment skills training provided to local trainees are continuing to steadily and successfully work on increasing the local capacity within Jordan to provide the critical care required to meet this need.

** A FULL WEEK OF 50% MATCHED FUNDING COMING UP:
On March 23-27 EVERY ON-LINE DONATION WILL BE MATCHED UP TO $50.
So this is a 5-Day opportunity to increase the value of all donations - and our ability to continue these life-saving services!
The campaign begins March 23 at 9:00 am (Eastern Standard Time) and ends March 27 at 12:00 am midnight. Please consider making a donation during this time.

Two examples of our community-based direct service programs that have very high potential for being quickly replicated and expanded to reach significantly more children and their families, and that we are seeking support for to make it possible, are the Trauma Informed Schools (TIS) program and the Women’s Safe Space (WSS) program.

1)  The TRAUMA-INFORMED SCHOOLS (TIS) program
integrates trauma healing, recovery, empowerment, and resilience building for Syrian refugee children and their families, as well as the schools teachers, into the regular school setting.

It is currently implemented at an elementary school for refugees in Amman where the students served have lost one or both parents to the war and violence of the Syrian civil war, and is being received enthusiastically.

This program works to create a school culture that supports children experiencing psycho-emotional trauma and profound loss. Services include:
  - teaching children personal self care and coping skills oriented to their age group and culture,
  - providing them with direct psychosocial counseling and intervention
  - providing these children and their families with resilience building experiences,
  - supporting teachers and training them to identify and understand trauma symptoms and how they impact a child’s learning and behavior, and to gain skills in how to best respond to and be supportive of students and parenting
  - providing parents with support and guidance in how to assist their child’s psychological and emotional needs, including their school performance,
  - developing teacher/parent groups to promote on-going cooperation and support between faculty and parents as they utilize the learned awareness and skills to continue developing and strengthening the program into the future.

With the support and endorsement of our participating schools and universities our intent is to demonstrate the success of this program in key cities throughout Jordan and promote the Ministry of Education integrating it into the curriculum of the existing national school system.

2)  The WOMEN'S SAFE SPACE (WSS) program
is a 2^nd important psychosocial service program we have established and have been operating in Irbid that serves at-risk refugee women and girls. This service provides a place where vulnerable refugee women and girls can gather and feel secure, comfortable, and nurtured in receiving psycho-social support, healthcare services, and basic personal needs, and where they can acquire skills to regain their dignity and confidence to help them heal and cope with their traumatic experiences to successfully recover. It provides a consistently available and inviting place for women and young girls to come together for needed guidance and support from psychosocial service staff, aid workers, and volunteers, and where they can regularly interact with and support each other as a mutual support system

Like all of our community based service programs, these two examples demonstrate effective, culturally tailored, and highly portable models that can be quickly scaled up, sustained, and replicated at other schools and local partner service agencies in Jordan - where the need is massive and skill and financial resources are scarce, to serve more refugee children, women, and their families.

We are now hoping to achieve the financial resources that will enable us to replicate these service programs in other major refugee population centers in Jordan.
With the needed support, we are preparing to use the trauma-informed school demonstration in Amman to replicate it at schools in Irbid and Karak, as well as other locations in Amman, and to replicate the Women’s Safe Space service program in Amman, Karak, and Mafraq

These cities both have significant refugee populations and are also where 4 of the 5 medical schools we have official partnerships are located. We also have local team members located in each city.

Importantly, our university partnerships provide a steady stream of medical student trainees we are equipping with psychosocial treatment skills through our Social Health Care certified psychosocial treatment and skills training program – which they receive credit for as part of their official academic programs. Through their field work for this training we are provided with a consistent pool of professional trainees who devote substantial time and energy to directly assisting our team in staffing and conducting these critical services, while also progressively increasing the overall pool of medical service providers in Jordan who are equipped to address psychosocial treatment needs for all.

An added benefit of having such a consistent supply of medical student trainees is that we can offer medical health screening and education services to those we serve.

Our overall model and commitment is always one of strategic collaboration with other local humanitarian service organizations and groups that share our commitment, to achieve a greater and more sustainable impact for large populations in desperate and immediate need, and to stretch scarce funds.

In this way every dollar donated to our efforts goes fully into direct services to multiply the amount of service actually provided, and the number of refugee children and their families who are reached with these services.

Although the need is immense, through our efforts and those we partner with, and with the essential help of those who generously contribute the needed financial resources that make it possible for us to continue this life-saving work, we are steadily making a significant, concrete, and lasting difference in healing and rebuilding the lives of so many - while making every dollar count.

HOW YOU CAN HELP MAINTAIN OUR LIFE-SAVING ASSISTANCE:

• Continue supporting our work with your generous contributions. Every donation amount results in our reaching more children and families to achieve more healing and recovery. And the 50% matching campaign increases the size of your donation.
• Share our story with family, friends, and colleagues to encourage their support by raising awareness of both the need and the concrete good being done.
• Link our appeal site to your social media sites and ask others to do the same.
• Learn if your employment offers matching donations for humanitarian causes to multiply our contributions.

Feel free to contact Steve Olweean or Myron Eshowsky with any questions or to share your feedback: SOlweean@aol.com.

Links:

• IHPA partner organization: Common Bond Institute