One of Psychologists for the Peoples of the World's main objectives is to implement emergency response and cooperation interventions to help people in developing countries aimed at promoting psychosocial well-being and protecting mental health.
Every phase of these interventions involves the active participation of local NGOs and associations, through collaboration agreements established in advance and forming relationships based on principles of independence and partnership, human and civil rights and cross-cultural sensitivity.
In planning and implementing psychosocial interventions in complex emergencies, Psychologists for the Peoples of the World draws on the model in the "IASC Guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency situations", paying special attention to factors of resilience in communities and populations affected by natural or human-made disasters.
Psychologists for the Peoples of the World can draw from our members to form a group of psychologists with extensive experience in the field of humanitarian assistance and cooperation with diverse skills suiting all phases of the project cycle.
This lets us serve as a consultant for the Italian and European NGOs in intervention areas that overlap with psychosocial issues, whether in emergencies or in development, as listed below:
The association has a database with the resumes and availability terms of psychologists who are motivated to participate in emergency and cooperation projects. For special, immediate needs, we can also put into action our network of contacts with other regional associations and regional professional orders to quickly and widely circulate personnel requests. Our association also draws on its specialized professionals to work with the project offices and leaders in selecting personnel based on their needed qualities, and in managing and monitoring this personnel;
Psychologists for the Peoples of the World is actively involved in studying issues of emergency psychology, organizing conferences and seminars, overseeing the translation and publication of documents, producing our own materials and working with the University of Padua and the Catholic University of Milan for their Master's programs in Emergency Psychology. This equips us to work with NGOs to manage educational courses on the psychological aspects of emergency and development projects for volunteers and aid workers.
The return periods are often marked by disorientation and adjustment difficulties for personnel returning after long periods abroad, often requiring psychological counseling and support. Our members include many psychotherapists and psychologists, allowing us to provide clinical support to NGOs within a policy of maintaining personnel loyalty.
Our professional and technical specialists let us provide consulting to NGOs throughout all phases of a project cycle, including:
choosing and planning programs or parts of programs with psychosocial qualities, through planning missions in the field, feasibility studies, needs assessment, intervention planning, sustainability analysis, and indicator definition, communicating closely with the offices leading the projects; during the project implementation and monitoring phase, through targeted, planned actions both in the field and at the NGO headquarters, including writing interim reports in the project evaluation phase, through on-site missions, aimed at verifying the achievement of objectives, the project's relevance and reproducibility, writing a final report.
These forms of collaboration may be complex and comprehensive or limited to just some of these phases. They are realized through formal agreements included within projects to be presented to donors to obtain the necessary funding.
We have seen a recent progressive growth in psychosocial programs, both in humanitarian assistance and development cooperation, resulting from increasing awareness of the importance of the psychological factor of interventions to support communities affected by natural disasters, wars and underdevelopment. This phenomenon presents a challenge to psychology, as it requires, beyond building a solid conceptual framework defining the paradigms specific to these projects, the availability of psychologists with the appropriate background of theoretical knowledge and organizational, professional and personal skills suiting them to work in international theaters. This challenge is also an opportunity, offering new professional openings to a group whose identity has been in question.
In this direction, our objective is to provide psychologists, and psychosocial professionals in general interested in exploring these issues or working in emergency and cooperation projects, with specific, complete and appropriate training to prepare them to play roles and fulfill responsibilities required by agencies working in this field.
Psychologists for the Peoples of the World is committed to promoting the role of psychology and psychological and psychosocial intervention in the international system of humanitarian assistance and development cooperation. This role, long in the shadows of other disciplines, has recently taken on increasing prominence, as evidenced by the publication in February 2007 of the "IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings. "
Our work seeks to promote this discipline, based on study and research that gathers and disseminates leading theoretical and applied contributions in these areas. We focus mainly on presenting writings, reports and posters at conferences and similar events aimed at psychologists and interested professionals and publishing articles in specialized and general magazines.
We are currently focusing our study, research and writing on the following topics::
• Analysis of the role of psychology in humanitarian assistance and development cooperation as a new field of applied psychology, drawing from the ideas of Ager and Loughry;
• Defining the conceptual framework of psychosocial interventions in international situations on the basis of materials produced by the Psychosocial Working Group, with particular focus on the concept of 'psychosocial well-being ";
• Study of psychosocial planning based on the principles of Project Cycle Management;
• Description of the figure of psychologist for humanitarian assistance and cooperation;
• Definition of a practical intervention model consistent with the "IASC Guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings";
• Study of the concept of resilience, including individual resilience, following Boris Cyrulnik's theory, and community resilience, as a new construct at the foundation of psychosocial interventions in complex emergencies and development cooperation projects;
• Study of Testimony Therapy as a tool for cross-cultural psychology used in the treatment of trauma caused by serious violations of human rights in war situations or socio-political violence
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