NGO Organises Trauma Healing Training For IDPs, Journalists, Others

Christian Solidarity Worldwide Nigeria ( CSW—N ) has organised trauma healing training for 90 internally displaced persons ( IDPs) and human rights defenders ( HRD ), comprising journalists, lawyers, pastors, teachers, and catechists in Maiduguri.

Sixty of the participants were IDPs who fled Gwoza local government area in 2014 when Boko Haram terrorists invaded their communities and declared Gwoza their caliphate before the Nigerian military liberated the local government from the terrorists.

The IDPs are till today in Maiduguri at CAN Centre IDPs camp where they have been living for the past 10 years following continuous attack in their community in Mandara mountain in Gwoza, where the terrorists are still hibernating.

Thirty of the other participants were human rights defenders comprising lawyers , journalists, pastors, teachers and catechists.

Speaking on the training, which ended yesterday at the St. Patrick Catholic Church Social Centre in Maiduguri, the executive officer of CSW-N, Rev Yunusa Nmadu Jnr, said the essence of the workshop is to develop resilience in people who have gone through trauma in the Boko Haram insurgency.

He said the programme started with the human rights defenders for the fact they work with a lot of the victims of the Boko Haram insurgency, who are suffering from trauma of the crisis, being that it is very possible that they too would have secondary trauma because of the work they do.

” So we believe that apart from preparing them to be able to help others, we needed to also take them through how they can access cure for themselves to be able to withstand all they come across in the course of the work that input trauma on them,” Rev Nmadu Jnr said.

On the training of the 60 IDPs on trauma healing, Rev Nmadu who is the immediate past secretary general of ECWA worldwide, noted that many people think that the greatest needs of the IDPs are money, food and the rest of such humanitarian provisions, but added that CSW- N have since after assessing them, discovered that they can be provided with those things , and yet they live in fear ,despair, timid and still have a lot of issues that could make them not to be integrated to the society.