1/26/2023 0 Comments Not all fun & GamEsWhile we are in Turkey, we are focusing on one course: Safety and Well-Being Challenges in Emergency Contexts with a focus on psychosocial support. I thought this would be a good time to talk about some of our classes and the program. Social media, and even this blog from time to time, do not show the whole picture of what we have been doing. While we have had amazing travel experiences, our program is humanitarian based and we discuss heavy topics daily and meet with those in often despairing situations. The NGO workers we meet with discuss with us the secondary trauma they face from constantly working in situations where you know you can only help so many people. Almost everyone’s advice had been to ‘get a good therapist’. Sometimes I feel like I've become less fun, but we've been dealing with so many difficult issues and seeing very sad things that it's hard for it not to affect you a little bit.
The other day was sobering as we met with a child protection organization that travels to African refugee settlements in rural Turkey, settlements being a loose term as really they're just groups of families spread out in tents. They said one of their programs is going out to work with the kids to get them prepared to go to school. We asked them what subjects they help the kids with. They said oh no, we're teaching them how to hold a pencil/pen because they've never had one before and showing them how to draw lines to be able to learn the alphabet. This was very sobering. Unfortunately they said many of these kids don't end up ever going to school as African refugees in Turkey are often undocumented so they kids cannot attend school, or they get pulled out of school early to work the fields and never end up going back. All this to say, that this work takes a lot out of all of us, so when we get to have fun we really capitalize on it.
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