Psychosocial interventions

Hi All,
Today has been an eventful day. A day with a lot of psycho-social interventions. We started the day with the discussion on the psychosocial intervention. In fact we had a case study where we had to plan an intervention for a situation. In a camp the organization was being funded for an intervention on Trauma. The member of the camp were in need of a children's park. The funding agency was planning to send in a consultant to evaluate the situation of trauma for a long term intervention. the plan was to negotiate with the community members and get the program going.

We were divided into three groups and set to plan. It was a competition for a box of Swiss chocolates. Our group meticulously planned for a child centric approach. We would construct a children's activity room and get the children involved. Later we would reach out to the parents and other elders. We would use this time to study the children and assess their exposure to trauma and maintain records of the situation. After sufficient preparation of the people we would bring the consultant. Convene a meeting of the elders and other stake holders and take the program through smoothly. We had presented it in the form of a chackra that would grow out from the inside. We even named it as the "ashok chackra".

The three groups presented their plans and there was a voting. We were so sure we would get the chocolates. When the votes were counted, the last group that presented won by one vote. But we were still the favourites. With that we move to a plenary session on psychosocial interventions. The session tried to address many issues such trauma, camp life and other possible scenarios. The interventions came from real life experiences of the participants and the tutors. With the wisdom of the interventions lasting for about an hour we stopped for lunch.

At lunch the whole discussion was about the way in which the psychosocial issues were dealt with. "There was no role of the social workers mentioned, most of the interventions were psychology oriented, the intervention was given a step mother's treatment, it could have been dealt with in a much better way, it did not meet our expectations" were some of the dominant topics.

With that we moved on to our student presentations. We had presentations related to camp life, interventions in the camps, and many other topics. People were giving newer paradigms to the model interventions. In some presentations the participants tried raise vital questions which they have been struggling with.

The session gave us a clear understanding of the limitations of organizations like the UN as well.

After that i went to a friend's house, had dinner came back, watched a short documentary on Palestine titled"without rights"
In any case it was too early to sleep so two of my Japanese friends went fro a long walk. We got back and had a juice party with Indian snacks and completed the day.