Let’s transform the conversation on humanitarian work
Begin with deep listening. Honor local knowledge and wisdom.
Read allBegin with deep listening. Honor local knowledge and wisdom.
Read allWe offer trainings to humanitarian organizations, community leaders and other individuals in how to use deep listening to nurture flourishing communities.
We identify and welcome emerging community leaders into a mutually supportive network.
We offer free webinars that offer a space of support and deep listening.
In 1986 medical anthropologist Pat Omidian worked with Afghan refugees in San Francisco and first realized that people can find their own solutions when resilience is supported in culturally relevant ways. The ensuing years took her to Afghanistan under the Taliban, to earthquake torn Pakistan, to post-tsunami Japan, and Ebola threatened Liberia. This gem of a book shares lessons she learned in over thirty years of working in diverse cultures with people and communities in severe distress. Reaching Resilience offers an easy-to-use psychosocial health approach called Community Wellness Focusing (CWF), the combined work of many dedicated community activists and healers. Each chapter explains a basic principle and gives examples of activities that support inner sensing, group learning and deep empathic listening. Focusing Initiatives International is the organization that Pat started together with social justice activist Melinda Darer to promote and support CWF worldwide.
A brilliant sequel to Patricia Omidian’s Reaching Resilience (2017), this compilation of activities relates the experience and wisdom of thirty community workers from all corners of the globe.
The contributors to Resilience Initiatives promote community wellness, bringing healing and hope to people of many different cultures. Their work touches the lives of a wide range of people: from babies to aging cancer patients, from rowdy twelve-year-olds to exhausted refugees, from citizens of densely populated urban communities to people who make their home on arid deserts.
Their stories are remarkable and the activities they share are easy to use and adapt to a wide variety of places and circumstances.
Community wellness is based on a public health approach with two assumptions. First, most illnesses are preventable, including various types of mental illness. Second, the community itself contains many solutions to its own health needs and already has many techniques to encourage resilience and wellness.
Read moreThis short video explains Focusing and how simple it is to learn and to use. It is written by Cynthia Spellman, MD and animated by Ruslan Mityayev.
Read moreOur weekly follow up zoom sessions with front line community workers in Cameroon have been going on for three years now, ever since they completed a custom-designed Community Wellness Focusing training with Pat Omidian. Because the original participants have trained their colleagues and invited them […]
Unfortunately, Pakistan is grappling with a severe energy crisis exacerbated by economic challenges, making electricity unavailable for the school facility. Currently the children sit in dark classrooms, where they have to open the doors and windows to let in enough sunlight to read. This means […]
No one calls Muhammad Ali by just one of his names. He is never just “Muhammad” or just “Ali”, but always both names together “Muhammad Ali” like the American boxer. His father named him after the famous American because that great man struggled from poverty […]
Someone calls us and asks for help with a local community project. Usually this person has worked with us previously or has taken our webinars or participated in one of our psychosocial support classes. The project may be already existing or it may be no […]
In two posts on our new Psychosocial Support website, Wajid describes two important events that impacted him, as a social worker in Pakistan. In “12 Years Later, PSS Training Continues to Support Change” he describes the time in 2010 when residents of the region were […]
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