Training for NGO workers in the Philippines

Capacitacion para trabajadores de ONGs en las Filipinas

The project can be seen as a bridgebuilding between two fields of experience and competence in psychosocial treatment and counseling of traumatized refugees. While OASIS, with its roots in a western treatment tradition and welfare society, has its strength in individual/family oriented psychosocial-interdisciplinary rehabilitation work, BALAY is more community oriented and rooted in the Human Rigths Movement.

Balay is a Filipino NGO which offers psychosocial/community rehabilitation services in their own country. Among the targets beneficiaries are newly released political prisoners and their families, and other victims of human rights violations but particularly the internally displaced persons.

OASIS is a Danish NGO, which offers psychosocial treatment and counselling to refugees and asylum seekers. A large number of OASIS' clients have belonged to the political opposition in their country of origin and have been persecuted, imprisoned and exposed to torture. Others come from a country of war or civil war.

In working with traumatized refugees who live in Denmark we have been very aware of the extreme emotional demands on each of OASIS' staff member - secondary traumatization.

Many of Balay's workers are themselves victims of the politics starting with the Marcos' and later regimes. They are often traumatized similar to the people they counsel. These particular conditions create a special demand for professional training/ education and necessity for supervision among Balay's staff.

In 1996, in acknowledgment of our mutual field of work OASIS was approached by another Danish NGO - Danchurchaid - to evaluate the Balay Rehabiltation Program for Victims of Human Rights Violations in the Philippines.

At first we realized that our Filipino colleagues had a tendency to fraternize with their clients in their mutualnational trauma of violence and oppression. Their orientation in working with individuals and communities alike took them towards striving after efficiency and problemsolving, thus creating enmeshment of needs between the counselor and the client.

Therefore we have decided to initiate a process of awareness concerning development of professional ethics with emphasis on more experience with process oriented interventions. Our presentation will convey our experience from the above described training program.