A Different Sort of Healing

MUZAFFARABAD—The earthquake hit shortly before 9:00 a.m., when most children were in school. Many died under collapsed buildings, but for those who survived school became a dreadful idea.

“The children were scared to go to school because in case there was another earthquake,” Arzana, a volunteer with the Alfalah Society in Muzaffarabad. The organization mobilizes volunteers for service, and has a particular focus on youth volunteerism. Through the Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO), one of the largest rights-based development organizations in Pakistan, they began a trauma counseling program for local children after the earthquake.

The program is one of a few addressing the emotional needs of earthquake affectees. After the immediate medical relief phase, most of the rehabilitation effort has addressed housing and job needs. But even today, according to Shabana Kausar of SPO, affectees and relief workers burst in tears when they are asked to recall the earthquake.

“There is a lot of emotion and shock that results from such an event,” said Adnan Sattar, a volunteer with SPO. “There has been no real effort to address that trauma and help people understand what has happened to them.”

Through SPO, the Alfalah volunteers visit schools in local tent cities and affected villages on a weekly basis, asking the children to draw their surroundings and discuss issues affecting them. They also provide an opportunity for the children to run and play, something they are denied in the cramped tent city environments in which they now live.

Despite the strong need for such an initiative, SPO has kept the program small. They only have funding for a few more months, during which they plan to train teachers in those schools to continue the counseling work.

“SPO does not focus on providing educational or counseling services,” said Harris Khalique, chief executive of SPO. “Our job is to mobilize communities at a grassroots level with the hope of creating policy changes.” He explained that the trauma counseling initiative will serve as a model that SPO will document and present to government education boards. They will recommend curriculum change and teacher trainings so that the earthquake and earthquake preparedness will be discussed in schools.

“It is the government’s job to implement such initiatives, and when it does they will be more sustainable than if [an NGO] operated such a program,” Khalique said. “We hope that our model and the success we have had with these children will initiate a larger reform in overall school curricula.”