Summer Peacebuilding Insitute (SPI) Course: Strategies for Trauma Informed Organizations

Session IV, June 4-12, 2015
Barry Hart and Daria Nashat

Conversations with peacebuilders, donors, international agencies, schools, and health system workers reveal that more and more people have begun to understand the need to deepen trauma awareness among individuals, communities, and organizations. This rising tide of trauma sensitivity feels akin to the movement prompted and sustained by Mary B. Anderson’s Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War, which began the conversation about implementing conflict sensitivity in international assistance – first in humanitarian work and more recently in peacebuilding and development.

Come and explore with us questions such as:

What does it mean to be trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed? What does it mean to be aware of (and responsive to) trauma among your workers, or among the people on the receiving end of your work? What are the practices beyond awareness and sensitivity, active steps that people and organizations can take to respond to trauma and build resilience?

There are jobs to do, programs to implement, things to “get done.” So how does one prioritize trauma sensitivity amidst the active and threatening violence that may be ongoing in the communities in which we are working, not to mention funding schedules, implementation and reporting deadlines?  When chaos engulfs the populations with whom we work (and from which we ourselves originate), how do we even talk about self-care? Is it true that workers will implement more effectively if they themselves are optimally healthy, and therefore caring for the workforce will improve service and impact? How do we work that into our theories of change and project plans?

US and European agencies have ideas about mental health resources to provide the workers they send abroad and to respond to those workers’ needs, but how do organizations provide equal care to national and international staff? How do we acknowledge diverse perspectives about emotional and psychological well-being, rather than attempting to apply one culturally specific model? How do different cultures and contexts provide insights into how to care for the well-being of people from within those contexts? Given that we know individuals have a huge diversity of responses to traumatic events, how can an organization include a variety of possible responses and implementation plans? Are policies and practices developed from within, by asking staff what would best help uphold their well-being? What are authentic ways of working to elicit locally appropriate responses to trauma?

How do individuals and organizations assess the impacts of trauma – primary and secondary – in order to develop trauma-responsive action plans? How do organizations improve and measure their own trauma sensitivity and responsiveness? What are examples, measures, and indicators of trauma-informed organizations?

For now, this conversation seems to have more questions than answers. In their course, Daria and Barry invite participants to shape the discussion and develop creative and constructive trauma-informed policies and strategies for their organizations or projects that include client care, worker care, and organizational effectiveness.

Reflections on recent STAR trainings

By the beginning of April, we had already done five STAR trainings this year: two at EMU, one in California with people working with families affected by domestic violence, one in Lebanon with Syrian Orthodox Church leaders, and one in Fayetteville, NC with military and civilian participants at Fort Bragg. The diversity of experiences in the room – from active-duty military to educators to church leaders to social workers to policy makers – continues to expand the possibilities of where STAR’s light may reach.

Both the California and Lebanon trainings were anchored in organizations. In California, participants were mostly with STAND! For Families Free of Violence, a group working to promote safe and strong families. In Lebanon most participants were from the Syrian Orthodox Church. Within each organization, participants came from across a broad spectrum: in California, there were clinicians, administrators, people working on violence prevention, and also those working on treatment. From the Syrian Orthodox Church, participants included the Archbishop, two priests, two nuns, staff, and volunteers.

In both Lebanon and California, Elaine felt keenly that the participants are working with hurting human beings in very complex contexts. She was encouraged that the organizational ties among the participants might enhance their long-term possibilities for impact, as prior to STAR many had not worked closely together. In both cases, participants felt they were leaving with tools for dealing with internal organizational conflicts or for helping the people with whom they were working.

For example, in California, clinicians were appreciative of the STAR model, particularly the cycles of violence part, for use in their domestic violence work. Framing cycles of violence in terms of “acting out” and “acting in” gave them new language and ideas for considering everyone involved in the situation.

In Syria, the church workers found the Village STAR model helpful because it gave them a way to understand and envision what they are going through, particularly the insight that it doesn’t solve the problems or change things overnight, but rather begins to help people identify some tools for themselves and others. Click here to read a blog post about the STAR training in Lebanon.

In Fayetteville, a pilot training involving active duty military (Ft. Bragg) and civilians led by Vernon Jantzi and Elizabeth Snyder, participants went through STAR while reflecting about how Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience might reach throughout military and civilian communities so affected by cycles of violence. How does one reconcile STAR’s understanding of the relationship between violence and trauma with the understanding of the military – focused on providing protection for a vulnerable population, often through combat?

As usual, we come out of these trainings with many questions and new tools, sharply aware of the complexity participants are facing each day, thankful for the new and deepened relationships and creativity within the STAR circles, and in prayer that we may continue to build safety, healthy leadership, and choices that move us away from the cycles of violence.

Recommended Readings from our February STAR (and more)

Do you remember during STAR, someone mentioned a certain book or article (or even a TED talk) and you thought, “Hey that should be next on my list…?”  Here are a few that came up in our February STAR training and in other conversations – we can’t vouch for all of them, but thought it looked like a good list to pass along (roughly in order of publication date).

1. Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014). Looking at how trauma manifests in the brain and body and how neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies can be transformative in the lives of people who have suffered trauma.
2. Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter (2014). The message here may not be surprising, especially to our colleagues who live in places less consumed by digital ways of working and living.
3. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Anti-Fragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (2012). As far as we can tell, the main idea is that we often think that things are on a spectrum from fragile to strong or resilient in the face of adversity; this book talks about things that thrive in adversity, chaos, or difficulty.
4. Anne Marie Healy and Andrew Zolli, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back (2012). How can people, systems and communities learn to bounce back?
5. Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (2011). An important caution about exporting mental health responses and paradigms and the disastrous potential for destroying deeply-rooted mechanisms for responding to crises in well-being in different cultures.
6. Gabor Maté, M.D., When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection (2011). A physician offers healing and learning possibilities in the links between stress, emotions, and health.
7. Peter A. Levine and Gabor Maté, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness (2010). Physician Gabor Maté and clinician/trauma researcher Peter A. Levine explore the biology, neuroscience, and body-centered psychotherapy behind transforming trauma.
8. Laurie Leitch, “Information Gathering after Trauma: Considerations for Human Rights Work, Peacebuilding, and Interviewing,” Africa Peace and Conflict Journal 3:1 (Jun 2010), 80-87. How do people share stories and collect evidence in ways that do not re-traumatize or create secondary trauma?
9. Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (2010). Shame researcher and storyteller Brené Brown discusses courage, compassion, and connection – key pieces of breaking free from cycles of violence.
10. Pauline Boss, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (2000)  How do people deal with grief when there is no clear ending or “closure”?

And a few thought-provoking TED talks:
1. Monica Lewinsky, “The price of shame” (2015)
2. Kelly McGonigal, “How to make stress your friend” (2013)
3. Brené Brown, “The power of vulnerability” (2010)
4. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The danger of a single story” (2009)

Strategic thinking about STAR

In May 2014 a collection of leaders/educators gathered at EMU for a consultation about STAR. It was a gift to have this group gathered in one place, and we learned about the diversity of ways people are implementing STAR-based work. While we will not be going ahead with the second stage of the consultation this year, we are working to determine plans for 2016 – whether they might involve a deeper STAR consultation or something in cooperation with our Restorative Justice colleagues, as we increasingly see the linkages between our work. Please do keep in communication with suggestions or questions about how you would like to see this strategic planning work move forward.

Mark Your Calendars!

STAR I - May 25-June 2, 2015, EMU, Harrisonburg, Va. (This training is part of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. To apply visit this website)

STAR I - June 8-12, 2015, EMU, Lancaster, Pa.

STAR I - July 6-10, 2015, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC

STAR I - September 21-25, 2015, EMU, Harrisonburg, Va.

STAR I - Oct. 26-30, 2015, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC

STAR II - Nov. 16-20, 2015, EMU, Harrisonburg, Va.

SPI is right around the corner!
And it’s not too late to join us for SPI—there is still room in some of the courses. It would be great to have you join us to walk and talk and learn together again!

Check out the full SPI offerings and register for classes, including Strategies for Trauma Informed Organizations visit http://www.emu.edu/cjp/spi/.

About STAR

Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) offers research-supported trainings for helping and healing professions whose work brings them in contact with populations dealing with historic or current trauma: mental health, medical and legal professionals; clergy; educators; lay helpers; peacebuilders; humanitarian aid and development workers and more.

The interactive trainings integrate neurobiology, conflict transformation, restorative justice and spirituality. The curriculum is adaptable in many contexts. It provides processes and tools for preventing escalating cycles of violence while enhancing health and resilience.

In addition to the Level I workshops, specialized trainings are available for those working with youth, returning veterans and historical harms. In the last decade, STAR has trained over 7,000 people, and the ripple effects have touched many more. The training has been described as invaluable, dynamic and life-changing.

To learn about STAR, download our complimentary e-book.

To sign up for a training, go to www.emu.edu/star.

To inquire about a training in your organization, e-mail us at star@emu.edu.