Working with War Child
We are working with War Child Holland, a NGO designed to assist with the mental health crisis of refugees in Uganda. They do this by addressing barriers to education, widening access to healthcare, incorporating technology into the curriculum, reducing stigma, and creating tools to screen children for behavioral and emotional problems.
Anna and Myrthe are our contacts at War Child Holland. They provided us with many helpful resources about mental health in Uganda and barriers to mental health services and gave us a helpful outline with dates and expectations that we could refer to each week. They also put us in contact with a woman named Sandra, who was born and raised in Uganda and was able to give us more information about the local context and culture. Overall, Anna and Myrthe were helpful resources in the adaptation of this process.
My group members were Dyln, Morgen, and Maria. Despite everyone’s busy schedule and lives, each team member worked hard to contribute and get their work done. Everyone was respectful of one another’s ideas, and it was a collaborative and safe workspace.
Our project proved to be more challenging than originally envisioned. After speaking to Sandra about the common life of refugees, we found out that there were many barriers these children had to face. Many of them lived alone or with older siblings looking after them, the mental health facilities are extremely far and transportation is extremely limited, internet access is scarce, and many people in Uganda do not believe that mental health problems are real problems, and mostly attribute symptoms to with craft. After learning from her, we felt discouraged and, like these children, needed more than what we could offer them. After speaking amongst ourselves and with Alden, we realized we needed to acknowledge that the refugee children do need more help than we can provide, but this project can be meaningful and impactful if we make it so.
Our next step was/ is to come up with multiple ideas to present to War Child. We turned in several ideas on Monday that we are very excited about, and look forward to hearing from Anna and Myrthe.
