Most of the time when we talk about resilience, we talk about bouncing back from acute traumatic events, like medical emergencies or natural disasters. We don’t always acknowledge the resilience necessary to respond to chronic adversities and structural inequities that lead to historical trauma through multiple generations. Psychiatrist and public health advocate Denese Shervington—who directs a community-based post-disaster mental health recovery division that she created…
We at the CBR Project condemn the brutal and deadly attack on the UN humanitarian aid convoy last week in Syria. Both aid workers and civilians were killed and aid supplies meant for thousands in the besieged city of Aleppo were destroyed. This is a documented pattern in the Syria crisis where the humanitarian space has been repeatedly violated. This…
This post is in honor of World Humanitarian Day 2016. Four years ago, I was one year into my humanitarian aid mission in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Picture this: My chest is tight, my hands are jittery, and my stomach is in knots. I have just returned from my last intended “R&R” and can already feel my resistance to stress evaporating. The…
In May, I attended the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul and then conducted a field visit to the Syrian border to plan our upcoming field-based training programs. The trip was a strange, exciting mix of two entirely different parts of the humanitarian aid worker experience. From advocacy in a suit and tie on one day to sifting through muddy operational…
Yogyakarta, Indonesia June 23, 2015 The iPhone has failed me. It doesn’t update the date and time on wireless networks, only on cellular. And so my phone was still on Tokyo time when I went to bed in Yogyakarta on the night of the solstice. Which means two things: it wasn’t 1 am when I went to sleep last night,…
In a widely shared article in The Guardian on April 29, 2015, Secret Aid Worker (S.A.W.) wrote of fears that the work “is affecting the aspect of my personality that made me want to become an aid worker in the first place: my compassion.” While not downplaying the personal benefits of a satisfying career, the anonymous writer nevertheless voiced a…