Work in Progress: Mental health and wellbeing support for aid workers

Hitendra Solanki writes about his Work in Progress seminar presentation this coming Thursday:

Recent research reveals that, increasingly, humanitarian workers are experiencing stress, anxiety, trauma, and burnout, at elevated levels, significantly impacting on their mental health and wellbeing. In the Philippines, a pioneering community-led approach to help address this increasing mental health challenge has been initiated.

The ‘Wellbeing Cluster’ is a pioneering project, and comprises a dedicated multi-stakeholder platform that brings together humanitarian agencies from across the Philippines, to prioritise the mental health and wellbeing of aid workers.

In essence, it links local and national NGOs with INGOs, governmental departments, academia, youth organisations, private sector, CSOs, and other key stakeholders to work together in strategically building the capacity of individuals and organisations in all aspects of wellbeing related to mental health. 

As a new model within the humanitarian architecture, it potentially represents the first of many Wellbeing Clusters, nationally, regionally, and globally, forming a living network of pooled knowledge, expertise, services and resources.

This short presentation will explore the journey of the development of the Wellbeing Cluster, and the various challenges that have been raised in the process. In particular, it will highlight key issues related to mental health, and offer a debate into how aid workers and communities could be more effectively supported for their mental health and wellbeing.

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Hitendra is currently the Mindfulness & Wellbeing Adviser for Simply Mindful, a mindfulness and wellbeing consultancy offering training and support to humanitarian agencies, academia and the business sector in establishing mindfulness approaches within their organizations.

In addition, he has also been teaching at London South Bank University since 2003, and is currently the Senior Lecturer on the MSc Development Studies course.

He has been active in the development and humanitarian sector for 17 years, and more recently, in hunger and health related programming for 10 years with Action Against Hunger UK.

More recently, at Action Against Hunger UK, he led the three-year Mindfulness & Wellbeing project as part of the Start Network’s Transforming Surge Capacity programme, funded by DFID under their Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) across Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the UK.

Hitendra is also a trained mindfulness teacher, from the Centre for Mindfulness Research & Practice (CMRP), at the University of Bangor. And has also had some teaching experience via the Centre for Mindfulness, at the University of Massachusetts.

The seminar is at 16.30-18.00 on Thursday 5 March in room JHB303 in the John Henry Brookes building, Headington Campus. This is the last Work in Progress session this semester. The seminar by Dr Kirsten McConnachie, originally scheduled for 12 March, will now be held in the autumn.

Neighbourly humanitarianism: Volunteering as intimate politics against Australia’s asylum regime

Tess Altman from the University of Southampton writes about her Work in Progress seminar on Thursday:

Volunteer humanitarianism by ordinary citizens in support of migrants facing hostile deterrence policies has become an increasingly common feature of the global humanitarian landscape. In this talk I focus on volunteer humanitarianism for people seeking asylum in Australia, a country with one of the most hostile deterrence regimes in the world towards people seeking asylum arriving by boat. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with humanitarian NGOs and volunteers providing services during 2015-16 in Melbourne, I discuss two standout features of their volunteer humanitarianism: a deep ambivalence with unequal relations, leading to humanitarian discourses of need being replaced by equalising cultural tropes such as neighbourliness and fairness; and the proximate and personal nature of humanitarianism undertaken “at home.” Volunteer humanitarianism in this context was a form of intimate politics against Australia’s hostile asylum regime, that was also infused with a complex gendered and racialised everyday politics of helping.

The seminar is at 16.30-18.00 on Thursday 13 February in room JHB303 in the John Henry Brookes building, Headington Campus. (The full list of seminars for this semester is here.)

Work in Progress: Age and disability in humanitarian response

Supriya Akerkar introduces the latest in our Work in Progress seminar series: Tackling Persistent exclusions of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian responses: Challenges and Way Forward

The sustainable development goals promise to leave no one behind and call for social inclusion of the excluded or groups marginalised in the development processes and all its SDG goals. Pursuance of these goals in inclusive ways would require various institutions to have the capacities to deliver this agenda. This research is a contribution towards this global ambition and reflects on the evidence from the Age and Disability Capacity Programme (ADCAP) to deliver it, particularly in relation to two social groups – older people and people with disabilities in the context of humanitarian responses and humanitarian organisations.

In this relation, it asks two questions: How and why does persistent exclusion of older people and people with disabilities take place in humanitarian responses? How can humanitarian organisations be capacitated to enable inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in their work?

The research identifies the dominant approach of humanitarian organisations which work with ‘special needs’ or ‘checklist’ approach to older people and people with disabilities as one of the main barriers to inclusion. Integrating concepts from critical disability and ageism studies, and the empirical evidence from the ADCAP initiative, the research develops a transdisciplinary framework for ‘critical capacity building’ of the humanitarian organisations to enable inclusion. Conceived as a ‘social-political discursive’ (SPD) framework for critical capacity building, it calls for facilitating structural changes within humanitarian organisations through focused and sustained SPD engagements over a period of time. The research shows that facilitation of such a critical capacity building approach is more demanding and requires more efforts than organising technical trainings, the conventional approach to capacity building in humanitarian organisations. 

The seminar is from 16.30 to 18.00 on Thursday, 31 October in JHB307.

Work in progress: memoryscape of post-recovery space

This Thursday sees the latest in our Work in Progress seminar series. The speaker is Dr Sana Murrani from the University of Plymouth. She will be speaking about the process of research and findings in her participatory mapping project, Creative Recovery, which looked at the journeys of everyday life of home and homeland of 12 refugees and asylum seekers in the UK where the construct of memory overlapped the construct of home and the maps became the journeys to post recovery space or memoryscapes. These memoryscapes contributed to the self-perceived recovery from trauma and loss. Sana’s research, which straddles the fields of spatial memory and cognition, critical urban theory and spatial practice, is focused on the understanding of the creative ways in which people respond to conflict and displacement spatially.

The seminar is from 16.30 to 18.00 on Thursday, 24 October in JHB307. 

Work in Progress: the history of Disaster Risk Reduction

This Thursday, CENDEP is pleased to welcome Professor John Twigg as the speaker in our Work in Progress seminar series. The seminar starts at 16.30 in JHB 307

The title for John's talk is: "From fringe to mainstream: the history of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)." John says about his talk: "This seminar reviews the history of disaster risk reduction (DRR) over the past 30 years as it has moved progressively from the margins into the mainstream of disaster and development policy and programming. It considers intellectual, institutional and other factors that have contributed to this mainstreaming or constrained it, and offers some pointers to the future of DRR." 

We aim for our seminars to be space for introducing new ideas and discussing work in progress, we hope you will join us for an exciting set of talks this semester. Click here for the full list of seminars.

Work in progress: international migration in Africa

After a long hiatus, the CENDEP blog is back online to mark the beginning of an exciting semester. This week sees the first in our latest series of Work in Progress seminars (full list below). Dr Oliver Bakewell from the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester will speak on "The productive potential of unruly movement: some examples from international migration within Africa":

This paper challenges the basic premises underlying the many international efforts to address the problem of irregular migration across the world. It argues that in some settings, international movement that is largely uncontrolled by the state and contravenes national laws plays an important role in securing the livelihoods of thousands of people. Drawing on examples from the Horn of Africa and southern Africa sub-Saharan Africa, it shows that while many cross-border movements may be seen as 'irregular' by the state and international community, at the local level they can be seen as routine, orderly and even regulated through local institutions. However, attempts to impose international standards of regularity - such as those recognised within the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration - by strengthening border management are likely to generate new costs and barriers to movement that undermine the livelihoods of poor people.

The seminar is from 16.30 to 18.00 on Thursday, 3 October in JHB307 (please note different venue from last year).

Mobilising home for protracted displacement

This week's Work in Progress seminar will be given by Anita H. Fábos, Department of International Development, Community, and Environment, Clark University and Cathrine Brun, CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University. They explain the topic:

 

Despite the contemporary rise of long-term refugee displacement, policies in place to manage it are based on remarkably static notions of home. In our talk, we use a feminist analysis of ‘home’ to critique binary policies of “home” and “not-home.” Instead, we propose that refugees themselves link different temporal and spatial dimentions of home into fluid constellations of home, and maintain these constellations through their mobile homekeeping practices. The multi-dimensional homes that refugees make through their daily house-keeping activities, networking and memory-work, and navigation through the international humanitarian system are recognizable as the shared human experience of home and a basis for improved and inclusive policies.

The seminar will be at 17.00 in the Abercrombie Building, Headington Campus, Third Floor, Stdent Hub, White Space. All welcome. See here for details of all the seminars.

Work in Progress seminars for the new semester

Welcome to the new semester at CENDEP. As previously, we will be holding a series of seminars on research work in progress by ourselves and friends of our Centre. These are generally at 16.30 on Thursdays. The first is next Monday, 4 February, at 17.00. A full list of topics and locations is below. More details about Monday's seminar will follow.

Can peacebuilders end the war with Boko Haram?

The first Work in Progress seminar this semester is on Thursday at 4.30. Hazel Healy from New Internationalist writes about her presentation: 

I travelled to IDP camps in North East Nigeria to find out what local people are doing to build peace in the midst of extreme violence of the war between Boko Haram and the government. In my talk I'll share the perspectives of local leaders who are trying to dampen down conflict in the camps, young men who formed civilian militias to stay alive and women who were kidnapped, navigated escapes and are challenging the violence of stigma on their return to their communities.

I will also share the perspectives of Nigerian journalists, civil society leaders and humanitarians who are working to address the root causes of conflict and tackle rights abuses.

Beyond sharing ideas and opinions from the ground and in line with the work-in-progress framing of the seminar, I will also explore some of the  questions that came up in the course of my research - such as (i) the continuum between victim and perpetrator (ii) how do you balance justice with forgiveness in peacebuilding? A theme that links to (iii) when and how should you broach feminism and female empowerment in war that relentlessly targets women? and (iv) reflections on journalistic practise  - the practical experience of telling a story like this one, getting there, crafting the story while considering ethics, representation and balance.

Hazel Healy is a co-editor at the New Internationalist magazine. She specializes in writing stories that explore human rights and development. Recent themes include humanitarianism, peacebuilding and migration with direct reporting from places such as Nigeria, Lesvos and Bangladesh. Her reports have also been published in other outlets such as the LA Times, The Guardian and De Correspondent.

The seminar will be held in the student hub on the third floor of the Abercrombie building (Headington campus). Please see here for further details and for a list of the entire seminar series.

Work in Progress seminars for the new semester

The blog has awoken from its midsummer slumber and our first task is to tell you about the new series of Work in Progress seminars that will start next week.

For those who are new to CENDEP, this seminar series is pretty much what the name suggests. Researchers from both within CENDEP and outside introduce their work, which often includes ideas that are still in the course of being researched and developed. The range of topics is wide, reflecting the multidisciplinary character of our centre and the range of research interests. This semester almost that full range is on view: conflict, humanitarianism, architecture and shelter, refugees, and human rights.

The seminars are held in the student hub on the third floor of the Abercrombie building (Headington campus). The exception is the third annual Nabeel Hamdi lecture, held in honour of CENDEP's founder, which is in the main lecture theatre of the John Henry Brookes building on 30 October. This year's lecturer is the Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni. More details about that fascinating event nearer the time.

Seminars are at 4.30 on Thursday afternoons (except from the Hamdi lecture, which is at 6.30 on a Tuesday). All are very welcome.