“Working for a Better World” aims to build resilient practices and cultures within Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to address the psychosocial support needs of staff and volunteers involved in migrant reception and integration. The project will encourage peer-learning approaches that will help to mainstream self-care into organisational responses. By developing innovative resources to upskill practitioners as key trainers/peer educators, it will build organisational competence to combat vicarious trauma & burnout, deepen social and political engagement, and ultimately strengthen practice around supporting migrants. The project will draw on and adapt peer support approaches for psychosocial interventions identified as good practice within international humanitarian contexts. It will produce tailored resources and training courses that respond to the specific needs of people working in the EU, with a focus on contextualising systemic issues around migration, developing collective strategies to address racism, and providing practical psychosocial supports for practitioners engaging directly with migrants. This will involve blended learning supports, to facilitate participants to undertake continuous learning with peers from around the EU. Led by Comhlámh (Ireland), the 30-month project will begin in Oct 2019 and involves partners from Greece (AA Hellas), Italy (CESIE) and Spain (Ulex). Their collective expertise includes: the development and delivery of non-formal training for adult learners on sustaining activism and supporting collaborative transformations; capacity building for organisations and networks responding to migrant arrivals; provision of psychosocial supports & debriefing for international volunteers and development workers; and direct experience of migrant reception and integration. The project will produce 4 intellectual outputs: - Research to document good practice in psychosocial supports for practitioners that draws on good practice in humanitarian interventions in the Global South. Findings will inform good practice guidelines that will subsequently underpin the project’s direction and outputs (M1-7); - A training of trainers’ manual that will focus on structural, collective and personal dimensions of building psychosocial resilience. It will foster the key skills and competencies peer educators require to effectively cascade psychosocial supports within a variety of CSOs (M8-17); - A learning journal & associated online peer learning circles that encourage peer educators to cultivate reflexive practice (M17-21); and - An online learning platform, incorporating a self-care course and peer learning space, which will support and promote CSOs, their staff and volunteers to develop resilient practice (M22-29). The resources will be disseminated locally, nationally and internationally, through partners’ existing contacts (reaching an estimated 1,050 organisations), and through multiplier events in Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain during M29/30 of the project (reaching 160 key stakeholders across the four countries). We will hold 5 transnational partner meetings over the course of the project (M1, 9, 16, 24 and 29), in addition to developing and running 2 training courses & 4 multiplier events that will enable us to cascade training in each national context (directly involving 105 participants): - A joint staff training will take place in Greece (M9), to build capacity within partner organisations to address key trainers’ support needs (16 participants, subsequently reaching 400 practitioners through their outreach/training); - A training of trainers’ (ToT) course for key representatives of migrant support CSOs will be held in Spain in M16 (24 participants, subsequently reaching 250 colleagues), which will similarly build their capacity; and - Four multiplier events will be held in each partner country (M19-21); these will enable participants in the ToT to bring their knowledge to a wider group of practitioners (65 participants, subsequently reaching 360 practitioners). All participants will be encouraged to bring learning from the training and from their engagement with the learning journal and online platform into their organisational practice and/or networks, thereby reaching further audiences and ensuring that the project’s outputs have longevity beyond its lifespan. The project will develop a common good practice framework that is appropriate for and replicable across a wide range of migrant support CSOs. This will help ensure that practitioners’ psychosocial support needs are not deprioritised in the face of their clients’ overwhelming needs by fostering resilient organisational practice, preventing burnout, and focusing on systemic change. Ultimately, the project’s resources will improve the quality of CSOs’ interventions and sustain the crucial work they are doing to promote tolerance and social inclusion in the communities and wider societies in which they engage.
Overall, we wanted people to be well within this work:for migrant solidarity responders to experience less burn-out & feelings of overwhelm or depletion amongst what is often very intense, and emotionally-demanding, work. Throughout the project, which was realised during a global pandemic, the background of wars, conflicts and crisis very much informed our processes with participants. We aimed to build spaces of internal and collective psychological and emotional safety, as we trialled the resources, developed content, and supported learners to build capacity as peer educators on psychosocial resilience. W4BW drew upon and adapted some existing peer support approaches identified as good practice within international humanitarian contexts, as well as bringing in partners' reflections & systemic contributions to emergent research around meaning-making and moral injury. The project aimed to create space for vulnerability and grief, recognising that there is rarely adequate time for rest, pause or regeneration, as staff and volunteers mobilise to respond to the next crisis. This, in turn, better supports refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant communities, through ensuring a response that is more grounded, trauma-informed and sustainable.
We applied for this project because we had- for years- been observing a noticeable absence of education and trainings that addressed the needs of those responding to forced and mixed migration in the EU. Our aim was to build resilient practices within Civil Society Organisations, NGOs and solidarity networks to better respond to the psychosocial support needs of staff and volunteers, amongst them those who were often experiencing primary or secondary trauma and cyclical burn-out. This included groups such as Search and Rescue crews responding to mass casualty events at sea; volunteers providing ongoing reception and integration support to people seeking international protection who are fleeing conflict and war; and migrant-solidarity organisations with lived experience of forced migration. We aimed to design in-depth, trauma-informed, integrative resources that helped build practitioners' capacity to act as key trainers/peer educators. Throughout the project, we also aimed, through focus groups and peer to peer networks, to build reciprocal processes. These recognise the need to resource those we have trained and ensure that we held our duty of care, to all who have so generously given us their time, reflections and insights.