A
woman prays as she attends Sunday mass in the street at église du
Christ de Port au Prince in the Haitian capital. The church had been
damaged and deemed unsafe.
Photograph by: Allen McInnis, Gazette file photo
As
part of her job at the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board, Cheryl
Smith-Debanné goes into schools when a student dies or a parent passes
away.
This week, on her March break, Smith-Debanné is taking her training in grief counselling to a new location.
She
is part of a small team organized by a Quebec-based non-governmental
organization that leaves today for Haiti to help train hundreds of
people so that they in turn can help others cope with the emotional
fallout from January's devastating earthquake.
Christian
Direction initially planned to train 200 people in basic post-trauma
grief counselling and accompaniment, said executive director Glenn
Smith.
"As of Saturday morning we already had 500 people
registered, which is amazing in Haiti," said Smith who chalked up the
interest to the "magnitude of the need."
The seven-member Quebec
team includes therapists and two teachers who have training in
post-trauma and grief counselling, Smith said.
The Christian NGO
is leading the training workshops but they are being organized by its
partners in Haiti. Those attending include university students and
faculty, and lay leaders and pastors. In Cap-Haïtien on the country's
north coast, Haiti's Education Department is sending all of its
teachers from the north to the training, Smith said.
He contends
there is "incredible" community support in Haiti for people
experiencing trauma and grief but it tends to be more communitarian in
nature. Individuals can fall through the cracks, he said.
"Psychology
and counselling is an undeveloped field in Haiti ... We've learned in
times of crisis, there's just not enough people to help people work
through their own grief and their own angst."
Smith said there
are three parts to the training: helping people to understand the
trauma, giving them the tools to take people through the steps of
grieving, and providing support for children.
While he won't be
on the trip, his sister Cheryl will work mainly in Cap-Haïtien. Once
they've trained a group of teachers, Smith-Debanné said the hope is to
go into school with them and put into practice some of the activities.
There are different kinds of writing activities, for instance, that
sort of bring children to a point where they can start talking, said
Smith- Debanné, a spiritual animator at the Sir Wilfrid Laurier board.
"When
somebody is bleeding you know what to do. But when someone has
emotional and spiritual and psychological scars it's harder to know how
to assess and how to respond," she said. "And yet they're walking
around with these things, especially the children."
Ron Pagé, a
therapist who is also going to Haiti, said he expects the need for
counselling will be huge. "I think it's going to be important that it
comes from within - from indigenous people who understand the culture
and the history better than somebody like myself per se."
With so
many displaced people going to Cap-Haïtien, Smith-Debanné knows she
will see traumatized people. She said she just wants to be relevant "to
help them to find their way in this."
"I feel really honoured that I can do something like that - that I can give back," she said.
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Act of God or human negligence?
Haiti Earthquake:
Earthquakes may qualify as acts of God. But don't try blaming the Almighty for the
calamity gripping Haiti right now if you're talking to Glenn Smith....
Click Here for the full story
