Mental Health Support for Ukrainian Refugees

Hi friends,

 

I am raising money to join the Health Support Team (HST) as an HST and school mental health co-trainer in Poland to support the Ukrainian refugees arriving daily. We have been asked by our hosts, the voivodship regional coordinators in South-Eastern Poland, to provide the HST curriculum and additional school behavioral health supports as soon as possible to local volunteers and students, as well as school and clinical professionals who can aid the refugees in managing their experiences.

 

HST is a behavioral health training program that provides evidence-based best practices for disaster relief WITHIN affected communities. It is a model that engages local trainers who are familiar with the language, customs, background and local culture. The HST curriculum has been trained successfully in Haiti after the great quake of 2010 and in Jordan with both Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

 

I have been asked to join the HST team, led by Drs. Kira Mauseth and Tona McGuire, to provide training and consultation to Polish schools, including leaders, educators, and students, as they welcome thousands of Ukrainian refugees. In addition to co-training in HST, I will provide training in STRONG (Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups), a school-based intervention for immigrant and refugee youth (K-12th grades). STRONG aims to build resilience and address psychological distress associated with the newcomer experience. STRONG is currently being implemented in schools throughout Canada and the United States

 

We will be training both Polish and Ukrainian students and volunteers on how to provide practical and effective behavioral health tools and interventions for people who are surviving through war and displacement traumas associated with the current invasion.

 

We provide the initial training for local trainers, and they adapt the material to make it culturally relevant and appropriate in support of the community they are working with. Then they continue the support by training additional volunteers. The programs becomes self-contained and sustainable from WITHIN the affected communities.

 

To learn more about HST, see the Health Support Team website. To learn more about STRONG, see the US STRONG website and the Canadian STRONG website . Please consider supporting this work.

 

All monies donated for this GoFundMe will be used to directly support training expenses for HST and STRONG, including material translation and our upcoming initial trip and follow-up consultation with trainers in Poland.