Community Wellness

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.

With minimal training, people can connect with their inner source of resilience.  With the right kind of attention, healing begins. We practice these skills.

Culturally-specific strategies enhance a community’s ability to recover.  To tap into this cultural wisdom, we identify those in the community who are already recovering and thriving.  We learn from them, adopt and adapt strategies, and help them share their experiences with others in their community.

Through our process, community members:

•  find the resilience to address problems
• improve community connections
• change how they face the stresses of daily life
• overcome creative blocks
• explore spiritual connections in their inner lives
• discover how they can be part of positive changes in the world

To foster resilience and community engagement, Focusing Initiatives International:

• Offers workshops on human development, including psychosocial wellness, healing from trauma, and coping with and reducing stress. We promote locally existing positive coping skills and wellness practices to create just and peaceful communities.
• Mentors trainers throughout the world in Focusing and other processes that aid in self-reflection, communication and greater listening skills, so that they can become more effective leaders and promote wellness, emotional safety, and human development in their own communities.
• Provides technical assistance to individuals and organizations to help them design, establish, fund, and operate local programs and projects to promote human development.

Outcomes:  

The success of our programs has been evaluated by two independent organizations and includes:

• Reduced violence in families and schools
• Improvements in wellbeing and physical health
• Reduced reliance on over-the-counter and illegal drugs and alcohol
• Increased capacity to facilitate peace and reconciliation

Definition of Key Terms:

Focusing:

Psychosocial wellness:
Psycho = having to do with emotions and personality
Social = rules and relations within a society, community or family
Psychosocial Wellness = Refers to the dynamic relationship between psychological and social effects, each continually influencing the other

Resilience:
The ability to deal positively with problems and traumas in life.
The ability to cope with problems by building on community and individual strengths and skills.

Our Projects

Children and Community Wellness

In communities experiencing stress that impacts healthy development, the whole system needs supporting. And often, starting with the children is the way to bring wellness to the whole.

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A Community Wellness Pilot Project:  Chacala, Mexico

This program is based on our experiences in developing community-based programs for wellness and resiliency in Afghanistan and Pakistan,  for communities that were suffering from the upheavals of war, natural disasters and  poverty.

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Community of People with Disabilities

This community networks to create an independent lifestyle for its members through individual empowerment and through social and political advocacy. Focusing Initiatives International is a natural fit for such a community, and is beginning a project to bring Community Wellness Focusing into this world.

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Supporting Projects in Pakistan

Much of Focusing Initiatives International’s work in Pakistan has centered on communities in FATA (the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of western Pakistan – the tribal areas that border on Afghanistan). This is the war affected area where communities and their local aid workers find healing in Focusing and wellness activities.

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