By Steve Olweean and Myron Eshowsky | Co-Coordinators
Over the last 3 months the support of donors has made it possible for our team of international and local volunteers in Jordan to continue the critical, life-saving psychosocial services we have been providing to the most vulnerable of refugees for the last several years, while at the same time training local service providers, including members of the refugee community, in practical skills to build their capacity for expanding on and sustaining these services into the future.
Along with offering immediate healing treatment to traumatized children and their families, our services provide important supervised field work experience for our health care trainees to practice learned treatment skills, and also function as pilot projects to demonstrate highly effective models for creating, operating, and sustaining viable services programs in difficult situations where the need is massive and the local skill and hard resources are seriously undeveloped and scarce. This is based on our strong belief that if the needed skills and systems are within the community itself and “owned” by the community, it makes for a much more effective, culturally appropriate, and lasting benefit to the largest number of those at most risk. With a long term commitment and if done well, it also better leads eventually to less outside assistance being necessary.
Our service projects are specifically designed to be replicated and scaled up in other locations throughout the country, in collaboration with our local service provider partners and trainees, and to be increasingly operated by them. In this way each of our efforts can multiply in it’s benefit to reach more of those in need for the longer period of time required for true healing and recovery.
Particularly since children make up the largest percentage of the entire refugee population, and have less self-advocacy ability and internal resources to cope with severe trauma and loss, we focus much of our healing work on children to help prevent long term psycho-emotional impairment throughout their lives and allow them to realize healthy and loving futures.
In addition to our current on-going services, one example of a new initiative is a project to assist a refugee elementary school in Amman that we have worked with for over 3 years to develop it into a trauma-informed school – creating a school structure and culture that supports children in their healing and recovery, and in strengthening their resilience and ability to cope, while also supporting school staff in more effectively responding to the unique needs of these students and their families within the educational setting.
This new Trauma-Informed Educational Recovery Project uses both formal classroom instruction, as well as specialized methods such as interactive games, group exercises, noncompetitive/cooperative sports, expressive arts, and multimedia materials to teach children a variety of stress management, coping, and self confidence, and resilience building skills.
The intent is to provide a viable and successful model that can be replicated and scaled up in other schools in Jordan that enroll refugees and other vulnerable at-risk children.
As another new development, we are expanding on our Women’s Safe Space project by adding sites to reach more at-risk women and girls. The Women’s Safe Space project provides a secure and supportive place where vulnerable refugee women and girls can gather on any given day to receive psycho-social support, healthcare services, basic personal needs, and peer support, and where they can acquire skills to help them heal and cope with their traumatic experiences, as well as daily living and socio-economic skills to achieve independence and successfully move forward with their lives.
With the continued vital assistance of those who resonate with these healing efforts by generously lending their financial support, we can carry on to help the most vulnerable of refugees with this life saving work, and ensure especially every child can look forward to a future of safety, relief, and joy.
By Steve Olweean and Myron Eshowsky | Co-Coordinators
By Myron Eshowsky and Steve Olweean | co-directors of SHC
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