Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

In the last six months, the Social Health Care program has been able to provide a number of ongoing classes in English for Syrian refugee mothers, children and staff working with these families. Learning English expands the possibilities of training services to the community as well as improving options for immigration if they are pursuing this. A new project being launched is the Economic Empowerment Project that will be offering vocational training in marketable skills and employment preparation and also guidance on organizing and operating a small business (like a web-based technical service or cottage industry business). This is meant for women and older adolescents who are now heads of household for refugee families.

Through our collaborative relationship with Kalamazoo College, we have several student volunteers coming to Jordan for a few months to work with the SHC program. The students  assisted in support groups for mothers, training in English language skills, special projects with the children, and recently through a fundraising campaign they launched were able to purchase the school supplies needed by children being served by SHC in Amman and Irbid. The success of these efforts is moving towards establishing an ongoing student placement with SHC in Jordan.

SHC is now running two ongoing support groups for refugee mothers. Through the request of the mothers, we are organizing support groups for adolescent girls and special groups for boys. A major concern of the mothers is the bullying the children experience in the community and they are requesting special training in how they can help their children with this. A training manual in facilitation of support groups written specifically for SHC training and service use has been translated into Arabic and will now be widely used. New materials on group work with children are being collated now and will be implemented later in October by SHC staff and volunteers. SHC staff will be on the ground to provide a series of trainings specific to these issues.