Dear Donors and Supporters
The second and part of the third quarter of 2023 have passed and here comes the progres report.
We have met two main challenges regarding our refugee work which concerns two groups of people who urgently need support through our programmes
- refugees from Ukraine who had to leave their country after the military invasion of Russian troops and an ongoing war in their country
- the still not ending stream of refugess from Africa and the Middle East
We have received a 6-digit grant for a two year project by the European Union for our HRE programme with which we are not only providing urgently needed trauma relief and re-empowerment for Ukrainian refugees, but also at the same time want to show with an accompanying research that with our programme we can economically and capacity-wise avoid an already building congestion of the mental health system in the EU countries. 80% will be covered by EU funds and still 20% (about 130,000 EUR) will need to be covered by funds still to be raised. So further and generous support is very much needed.
The project runs under the name "Peace of Mind and Strength of Heart". Our project website is https://pmsh.iahv-peace.org
Our project started on the 1st of December 2022 and even though we a still in our preparatory phase with finding and engaging Ukraine refugees, a first training with professional mental health staff has already taken place. The first HRE workshop with refugees is planned for January 2023 - while the full rooll-out is supposed to start beginning of March 2023.
We want to touch about 7,000 people during the 20 months of the project which about 4,000 of them being adults.
Our programs also contain special trainings for young adults (age 13-17) and we plan to run such trainings for about 3,000 people.
Meanwhile we have completed 45 workshops in different locations in Germany (Rosenheim, Munich, Worms, Cologne, Bonn, Frankfurt, Dresden, Düren. Marburg) one of which a workshop specially designed for children age 6-11 and reached about 500 refugees.
The train is slowly getting momentum and we hope to have a significantly bigger number towards end the actual quarter.
One major challenge is the recruitment of participants, to find and enter Ukrainian communities. Here we still have to improve but are already on a good way.
So far the news.
Again a BIG THANK YOU for all your support !!
We will keep you posted on further developments.
We look forward to your ongoing support and would appreciate if you also continued talking to families and friends about our project to spread awareness of this important matter.
Best regards
IAHV HRE Germany Team