Helping communities to heal – a first line emergency response.

Zena conducting trainings of trainers in the field, one targeting partners in French and one targeting Sudanese community mobilisers in Arabic. @Karl-Max Nodjiram/ NIRVANA

Shelter, clean water, food – these are obvious life-saving responses to people who have fled their homes. Mental health is often pushed down the line to some later time, and thought of only as counselling and clinical treatment – but responding to people’s mental health and psychosocial needs has to be thought of as a first line response.

“Not being able to sleep, wash yourself, having no access to loved ones, not being able to feed your family – of course this causes mental and psychosocial distress.”

Zena Awad was deployed by the Dutch Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Surge Mechanism roster on three deployments in the last year all in support of the response to the Sudan crisis, including six months in South Sudan with the Health Cluster and WHO, one month to supporting the response in Sudan with the Protection Cluster and UNHCR, and finally two months in eastern Chad with UNHCR. In all three countries, Zena’s focus was on making her contribution sustainable through supporting local partners to engage in MHPSS coordination, providing capacity building in Arabic, French and English and integrating MHPSS across multiple sectors and clusters – ensuring that it continues to be central to first line responders, and across interventions in health, education and protection. Zena’s connection with the Inter Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Reference Group on MHPSS meant that she could roll out the MHPSS Minimum Service Package (MSP) of tools and approaches, ensuring consistency, quality and harmonisation of MHPSS approaches in emergency settings.

@Karl-Max Nodjiram/ NIRVANA

In her most recent deployment, she arrived to support UNHCR Chad in a response that is still in the midst of the emergency and receiving new arrivals daily.

“MHPSS is much broader than people generally think – it is about the whole spectrum of coping with stress and adversity. How do we help people access information and essential services, protect dignity, strengthen resilience, provide safe spaces, facilitate social integration, social support mechanisms and enhance social cohesion, restore trust, reduce stigma, and give people back a sense of agency over their own wellbeing. It involves interventions in every sector helping a community to heal.”

Being Zena’s third deployment through Standby Partnerships, she is able to have an impact in a short timeframe. “Before I deploy I ask for all the field documents colleagues can send me – I don’t need to start from scratch and neither is it ethical or efficient to do so. Even though the Terms of Reference for my role called for an assessment, it wasn’t needed – I read existing assessments from local partners and the Ministry of Health and it was easy to see that the community had already identified that they needed basic MHPSS trainings, and that these needed to be conducted in Arabic”. 

Through existing resources in the Minimum Service Package for MHPSS, as well as translating what she needed for the local context, Zena immediately planned two trainings of trainers (ToT). These focussed on what was needed in the local contexts – such as psychological first aid, how to support children of different ages, selfcare promotion for staff, and referral pathways. The first training was conducted in French for 22 trainees, mostly national staff of local partners and health authorities, and a few from INGOs and UN agencies. The second was conducted in Arabic to 29 Sudanese refugee community mobilisers who were teachers, doctors and social workers in Sudan. The trainings were transformative for participants, who were equipped with the tools and skills to not only support their communities themselves but also to train others – the week after Zena’s departure a cascade training was conducted by four of the Sudanese now-certified trainers, targeting Sudanese community leaders, and supported by the NGO’s Action Contre la Faim (ACF), Nirvana and African Initiative for Relief and Development (AIRD).

Zena’s deployment is an example of the catalytic nature of Standby Deployments:

“As an inter-agency Standby Deployee, you have the mandate to get things moving. The programme really is an excellent example of how a little expertise can go a long way. You consider your deployment timeframe and be selective – then throw everything at where you can lay the foundation for work that will go a long way.”

@Karl-Max Nodjiram/ NIRVANA