Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

We are excited that the 5000 teddy bears have arrived in Jordan. Plans are underway to distribute the bears to refugee children in different areas of Jordan including Amman, Irbid, Mafrac City, and the camps. We are collaborating with several NGO's in the region to aid in their distribution. The teddy bear project will be:

a. Offering training to parents in trauma and how it effects children. The training will specifically teach how the teddy bears can be used by the children for self soothing, bonding, and security. These trainings will be held to include staff, students, and volunteers in the use of the bears.

b. Research will be done by SHC staff and faculty from Yarmouk University, Irbid,Jordan in the usefulness of the bears as a therapeutic tool in allaying the effects of childhood trauma.

c. Along with the annual training conference in transgenerational trauma and its healing held in October, SHC will be doing outreach to the Syrian refugee community in Jordan through public education and community entertainment events in Amman, Irbid, and Mafrac City where most of the refugees now reside. SHC will be assisted in these events by Empty Hands Music and Gesundheit Institute.

The first group of paraprofessional diploma students (SHC/CBI and Yarmouk University) has completed their training. The next group will begin in early September. This diploma program has allowed us to train more and more parties in trauma informed care and its treatment as we ongoingly work to build capacity in the region in addressing the service needs of the refugee population. Efforts are underway to build graduate level programs in psychology and social work as well as continuing to build field sites for the students to gain the hands on experience needed for licensure. 

We are building an increased number of on the ground training events in October. A report on the extent and scope of these trainings will be in our next report as the final details are not available quite yet.