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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched a community training manual on trauma awareness and psychosocial support in Juba.
The training is targeting communities affected by the conflict in South Sudan to promote healing and reconciliation.
The document is a guide for psychosocial facilitators to conduct trainings for community volunteer counselors.
UNDP’s representative Titus Osundina, has urged the facilitators and volunteer counselors to read the manual as a guiding document in conducting.
He says the manual will help South Sudanese to address and recover from trauma given the cycles of violence and wars that have occurred in the last decade.
Titus highlighted that manual was created to stress trauma awareness and psychosocial support as the basis for healing and reconciliation.
“This community trauma manual will help volunteer counselors to address issues of trauma caused by decades of war and conflict in South Sudan.”
The Undersecretary Ministry of Peace Building Pia Philip Michael, has encouraged trained facilitators and volunteers to use the manual to change communities.
He says the volunteer counselors should engage the communities in psychosocial support, trauma healing and dialogue to end the cycles of violence caused by trauma.
Mr. Pia urges partners to initiate activities that will keep the trained counsellors engaged so that they don’t just end up on the street doing nothing.
He said partners need to keep the trained volunteer counsellors busy to enable them to provide support to traumatised women and youth in the communities.
“I want to encourage my dear brothers and sisters, take this work personal. Trauma healing and psychosocial support is a tedious job try hard and change the face of your community,” Undersecretary Pia stated
Duor Kuany Duor, representative of the volunteer counselors says it has been difficult to deal with traumatized patients because when the victims of trauma narrate their stories it also affects the counselors.
He says the stories from traumatized girls, women and youth leave most facilitators with secondary trauma. This occurs when you listen to another person’s traumatic experience.
Last year, UNDP trained more than 40 Psychosocial Facilitators and community Volunteers Counselors on trauma healing and psychosocial support.
These facilitators and volunteers are required to engage the members of the community to take responsibility for their own healing and transformation process.
An African Union commission of inquiry on South Sudan final report shows that, trauma is the key consequence of conflict. More than 6.5 million South Sudanese people are reported to be suffering from trauma.
The report suggests that, proper identification and handling of trauma victims in South Sudan is the only way to break cycles of violence and return to peaceful co-existence.