Let’s transform the conversation on humanitarian work

We 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.