The Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution concludes a project entitled "Responding to psychosocial stress and violence against children during and after emergencies in the Gaza Strip"
Conclusion of the project
The Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution recently concluded a project entitled "Responding to psychosocial stress and violence against children during and after emergencies in the Gaza Strip", in cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The project ran between 17/9/2015 and 17/3/2016 with the aim of improving children's psychological state by providing them with psychosocial support in emergencies, raising the awareness of parents and carers, and building the capacities of activity leaders and specialists.
The project reached 56,523 children through the various activities of the psychosocial support project across all the governorates of the Gaza Strip, as well as 17,445 carers and parents.
Activities for children
Among the most important activities the Centre delivered for children were the psychological resilience activities, which reached 45,500 children and centred on the themes of violence, the tree of peace, my body is mine, finding a safe place, and the person who matters most in my life.
The Centre also ran individual counselling activities for children, reaching 1,678 children across all its branches, and carried out a campaign of emergency visits to 1,605 children in Gaza during the emergencies that strike the Strip, whether military assaults or natural disasters. It also formed groups for collective counselling, which reached 600 children suffering from similar problems such as shyness or aggression.
The Centre sought to support children in marginalised areas, in areas that had come under assault and in the most fragile places, and children suffering from social and educational problems, through an activity it called "Big Brother". Each group of children had a big brother who supported them, met them and made school visits to them in order to improve their psychological state. Open days were also held for children, reaching 7,000 children from across the Strip.
Activities for parents
The most important activities directed at parents and carers reached 6,005 women on positive discipline, discussing positive upbringing in the daily life of parents, comparing positive and negative upbringing, and the harmful long-term effects of physical punishment. A further 11,440 men were reached through groups in mosques to raise their awareness of the same topics.
Developing the capacities of activity leaders
The Centre worked hard to build the capacities of the project team, training 124 activity leaders in psychological resilience sessions, training 40 educators on the positive discipline manual, training 32 counsellors on group work methods with a focus on the two manuals on shyness and aggression, and delivering the Big Brother training, which reached 14 male and female counsellors on how to deal with children, understand a child's condition and intervene in a systematic way.
The project established five central emergency coordinators at governorate level, who work during and after emergencies, whether wars or natural disasters. Their tasks include preparing weekly and monthly situation monitoring reports, on the basis of which the main child protection concerns are identified and urgent cases referred.
The Centre also formed coordination committees, "emergency teams", to set up joint committees with all the bodies active in child protection in emergencies, such as municipalities, ministries, governorates, reconciliation committees, mukhtars and the Red Crescent Society.
Child protection
Support was provided to the child protection group, which brings together all the organisations working in this field and confronts the negative phenomena affecting children, such as children heading to the border areas between October 2015 and December 2015. At first the child protection working group noticed that large numbers of children were going to the border areas and being killed or wounded. A focus group was therefore formed at Beit Hanoun municipality, bringing together the popular committees, mukhtars, parents and civil society organisations, and this phenomenon and the danger it poses to children were discussed.
The Centre held awareness sessions with parents and children, making clear through these messages how dangerous this phenomenon is for their children's lives. In parallel, the Palestinian Center played a unique role in liaising with the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs in order to raise the awareness of parents and families through Friday sermons and religious lessons in mosques.
The Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution followed up over a full month on how far these messages were heeded, and in general a fall can be observed in the number of children killed and wounded.
