Training on Emotional Expression and Relaxation

On April 25th and May 12th Nepal was shaken by two major earthquakes. Due to this disaster 9000 people were reported dead and around 900,000 houses partially or fully destroyed. An estimated number of 36,000 classrooms were destroyed and another 17,000 damaged. Teachers and students are facing challenges of continuing education in makeshift environments with a great number of them having experienced potentially traumatizing events around the earthquakes. Moreover, many continue to face stressors daily, with uncertainty prevailing. The challenge in classrooms is now to continue teaching and learning in this environment, and for teachers to provide safe spaces and enable the processing of experienced stressors at an individual pace for their students. Crucial elements of this are to provide space for relaxation and the possibility of emotional expression, but also for play and distraction.

To support teachers and the other professionals working with earthquake-affected children Pro Public organized two rounds of training on Emotional Expression & Social Interaction (i) and Relaxation (ii) for 61 participants from community schools, District Education Offices (DEOs), non-governmental organizations and theater homes of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Dhading; Ministry of Education (MoE); National Center for Educational Development (NCED) with the support of Health Sector Support Program (HSSP) of GIZ.

The training was taken place from August 8-10 and 12-14, 2015 in Lazimpat, Kathmandu. The main objective of the training was to provide a methods of enhancing emotional expression and relaxation to the professionals who work with the children so that they can use this skills and knowledge to the children to make them relief from the mental trauma and physical pain, especially in the post disaster situation.

Facilitator of the training was Prof. Dr. Marcus Stueck, Professor for Psychology at University of Applied Science (DPFA) in Germany.

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