Healing Refugee Trauma

With nearly 69 million people worldwide who have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of conflict or persecution, we’re currently confronting the highest levels of displacement on record. Thousands of refugees fleeing ongoing conflict in Syria, escalated violence in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and famine in Yemen have arrived at Greece’s borders in recent years. Yet refugees and migrants often flee devastating situations only to be  greeted with an onslaught of criminalizing policies and narratives that restrict their lives and deepen their trauma. The Heal into Action (HIA) program tackles these issues from the inside out — supporting communities to heal from within and to speak out against violent border policies and the anti-immigrant narratives that bolster them. HIA is a Training of Trainers Program that works with refugees, migrants, and the staff of organizations who support them, using psychosocial techniques to heal trauma, storytelling and theater to reclaim narratives, and advocacy and activism to take back power, through the four HIA stages: resilience, repair, reclaim, resist.

Participants in the Training of Trainers (ToT) will include people like Eva, a young Kurdish refugee who led youth and women’s programming at Jafra, a Palestinian Syrian refugee-to-refugee support network. Through participating in the HIA workshops:

• Eva worked with her peers to develop a powerful theater piece speaking out against the policies that confined refugees in overcrowded detention centers on the Greek islands.

• Through the resilience and repair sections of the workshop, they learned psychosocial support and trauma healing practices, paving the way for them to develop their own activist theater piece with a related petition campaign.

• Eva reclaimed her own story of being stuck in the harsh camps, performing an expressive testimony in front of a crowd of nearly 100 people, while her peers silently performed a poetic re-enactment on the stage in front of her.

• Activated by the workshops and the performance, Eva went on to support theater programming at her organization and collaborated in developing the ToT curriculum for Heal Into Action.

We will provide an intensive “training of trainers” for 25 community leaders like Eva, and these 25 trainees will then be prepared to facilitate Heal Into Action groups for hundreds of other refugees and organization staff.  Through expanding the network of trainers with community leaders who are prepared to run Heal Into Action groups across different locations and communities, HIA will be rooted even more deeply in values of sustainability and autonomy.

Your Support

We are working to raise $5,000 that will go toward delivering 8 days of training — two full sessions of Training of Trainers — and supporting our trainers to offer workshops to hundreds of other community members and staff once the initial training is over.

• $1,125 will ensure that we can pay local trainers and support staff, who help to make this training possible
• $1,000 will provide food and supplies for the training
• $675 will ensure that we have translation of all our materials and training sessions into 4 languages  
• $600 to cover childcare costs to ensure that women can fully participate in the trainings
• $700 to cover costs of space and accommodations for 8 days of training

• $900 - travel costs for full training team

Background

Once viewed as a temporary entry point for refugees, Greece has now become a years-long stop on an indefinite journey. Refugees are arriving to a country that is still reeling from severe economic crisis, and that lacks adequate facilities and systems for refugee support and resettlement. As the international media spotlight has moved on, organizations are facing the challenge of responding to increased trauma among both refugees and the staff supporting them, while doing so with increasingly limited resources.  We know that short-term solutions can’t solve these deep-rooted problems — so we partner with the people most directly affected to build a network of leaders who are committed to the sustained, long-term work of restoration and transformation. These leaders are trained to create HIA groups in refugee camps and community organizations, guiding other refugees, migrants and staff through the program stages of resilience, repair, reclaim, resist, using participatory exercises and live performances. Launched in Greece in 2016 with a network of more than 13 organizations, the HIA model has been steadily refined over the past two years to arrive at a new stage — an intensive Training of Trainers where 25 refugees will go on to train hundreds of refugees and staff members.  Through this new model of creating a network of trainers who are ready to guide their own communities through the program, Heal Into Action will become a more sustainable and replicable training that can be diffused region-wide.

About Us

Heal into Action is a collaboration between the Rhiza Collective and The Living Theatre. Rhiza Collective is a women-led non-profit organization using storytelling, healing, organizing, and research to support social transformation and environmental justice. Rhiza has worked with partners across the globe to support communities confronting human rights abuses, refugee and migration issues, and environmental crisis. Our partners range from global organizations like EarthRights International to grassroots networks like Jafra Foundation and the New York Worker Center Federation, and we focus on creating long-term, sustainable solutions that center the leadership of the people most directly affected. The Living Theatre is the oldest experimental theater group in the United States, winner of 4 Obie awards, and has toured extensively throughout the world, often in non-traditional venues such as streets and prisons, including a recent tour with refugee communities across Europe.  The Living Theatre exposes social/political issues through community workshops in which participants create original theatrical pieces as a tool for empowerment.