Comfort for Kids

After the March 11, 2011, earthquake rocked Japan and the subsequent tsunami wiped out entire towns along the country's northeast coast, Mercy Corps responded immediately by providing emergency supplies, transportation to essential services, and vouches for survivors to take care of their needs.

Along with partner Peace Winds Japan, our work quickly transitioned to psychosocial supports for children and adults, as well as longterm economic recovery projects that will continue for years to come. Twelve months later, reminders of the tragedy are everywhere — but so is an incredible resilience and hope to rebuild the future.

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Photo: Chris Cabatbat/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program provided fun and creative activities to help children cope after the tsunami. Local facilitators are being trained to continue similar programs longterm. Photo: Chris Cabatbat/Mercy Corps

As I bumped along the slippery coastal road in a bus, I wondered what I would learn at the training that I was headed to in Kamaishi, Japan.

Our partner agency, Peace Winds Japan, had arranged for Donna Shuurman, from The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, to talk to professionals in the Tohoku area, which was devastated by last year’s tsunami. The Dougy Center specializes in helping children and families cope with grief after losing loved ones.

While Mercy Corps’ Comfort for Kids program transitions to local facilitators for the longterm, trainings like this aim to empower Japanese professionals working with children to better understand young people’s unique reaction to loss and learn the best ways to help them recover.

When the tsunami tore through towns on the northeastern coast of Japan, survivors witnessed firsthand the destruction of their communities and the loss of family and friends. For children in particular, the sudden changes were frightening and often resulted in new behaviors and challenging setbacks.

Although families, educators, nonprofits and the government have worked hard to normalize life as much as possible, some children are still struggling. In Japan, where emotions are not always shared openly, it is especially hard to work through the grieving process.

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Children at the Mercy Corps art caravan in Kesennuma at a temporary housing community in their community room.

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Mercy Corps psycho-social experts have conducted psychological assessments of thousands of Libyan children who have endured months of violence in the city of Misrata, the epicenter of the conflict, and found that children are suffering from significant emotional and mental stress.

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As the difficult anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001 looms, those of us old enough to remember it cannot but think to where we were and what we were doing when the planes hit, and in retrospect, how our individual lives as well as our country has changed. The news and social media are replete with personal recollections of the day and its sorrowful aftermath.

For me and for Mercy Corps, the attacks on the World Trade Center marked the beginning of the legacy program called Comfort for Kids.

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Ten years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a program first developed to heal the emotional wounds of children in New York City has been used to help kids around the world.

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Dr. Omar Reda with children in Mercy Corps' psychosocial program, Comfort for Kids, in Misrata.

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I recently caught up with Dr. Omar Reda, a Libyan-American psychiatrist who’s helping Mercy Corps set up psychosocial programs for children affected by the conflict there.

Dr. Reda earned his medical training at Libya’s Al Arab Medical University. He completed his residency in psychiatry at the University of Tennessee and received additional training in disaster psychology at Harvard. Today he is assistant professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and three children.

In March, Mercy Corps began delivering humanitarian aid — food, water, sanitation — to people in Libya whose lives have been upended. Now we’re working with our partners Bright Horizons and Nike to adapt our Comfort for Kids and Moving Forward programs. We’ve used them after other disasters to help children recover. Dr. Reda is leading the effort.

You fled Libya more than ten years ago. You were working as an ER doctor in Benghazi and learned you were on Gaddafi’s hit list because you’d been delivering food to needy families. How does it feel to be back?
I left as a refugee, and now I’m coming back to a country that’s going to be free. That’s a very nice feeling.

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We now have a five-person response team in Tripoli, visiting hospitals, assessing general humanitarian needs and meeting with other emergency relief groups such as the Libyan Red Crescent.

Initial reports of humanitarian needs in the Libyan capital indicate that hospitals are stretched to capacity, and water, food and fuel are in short supply.

Meanwhile, we're preparing to provide post-trauma assistance to 5,000 children in Libya through two programs:

• Comfort for Kids focuses on training non-mental health professionals to help children recover from the emotional effects of a large-scale disaster.
• Moving Forward uses sports and games to promote resilience, teamwork, self-esteem and constructive communication to crisis-affected kids, and targets children and young people aged 10-19.

Read more about the program in today's edition of The Scotsman, the hometown newspaper of our UK headquarters.

Also, next month we'll open a Civil Society Resource Center in Benghazi in response to community desires for the support and training of community service organizations in a new Libya.

Stay tuned for further updates.

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