Aristide Foundation for Democracy » Soulaje Espri Moun

Soulaje Lespri Moun Presents at the American Psychological Association Convention in DC

lauraflynn — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:36:54 +0000

Roger Noel and Jacques Solon Jean of the Soulaje Lespri Moun Project at the APA Convention in DC

by Leah James

In early August, Roger Noel and Jacques Solon Jean joined me (Leah James) in Washington DC to give a presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. Our talk focused on the development, implementation, and evaluation of Soulaje Lespri Moun (SLM – Relief for the Spirit), a lay mental health worker project housed by the AFD. Roger, the project manager, Solon, the project psychologist, and I have worked closely over the past year and a half with a dedicated team of Ajan Sante Mantal (lay mental health workers) to provide coping skills seminars for residents of camps for internally displaced peoples (IDP camps) in Port-au-Prince. The Ajan have worked in 7 camps, with nearly a thousand residents, providing education about natural disaster safety and common responses to stress and trauma, and teaching relaxation techniques and other coping strategies. Participants in the seminars are given exams, and if they pass, receive certificates. They are then prepared to run their own support groups for other camp residents. This model allow for time- and cost-efficient dissemination of information. We have also found that for camp residents to re-engage with their own stressful and traumatizing situation with new skills and in a helping role has therapeutic properties in itself.

Roger and Solon working with a group of camp residence at Carradeux

Our presentation was very well-received, and we met many interested and enthusiastic people. Although thirteen thousand people from all over the world attended the conference, Roger and Solon were the only attendees from Haiti and were honored to represent their country and the AFD. They were always surrounded by curious people asking them about their experiences and expertise. In addition to our main presentation, we were also asked to give a conversation hour for Division 56 (the trauma division) of the APA. Roger and Solon had been awarded funding from Division 56 and from the APA’s International Office – we were very thankful for their support and warm reception. We now have many new friends and collaborators, including two Haitian-American doctoral students.

The trip was not entirely business – this was Roger and Solon’s first visit to the US, so we were sure to do plenty of sightseeing as well. We visited the White House, the Washington Monument, the Natural History museum, saw a 3-D showing of Captain America, and ate as many different kinds of food as we could find. Solon’s favorite was burritos, while Roger liked sushi and Ethiopian food. A successful trip on all accounts!

Note: Presentations about SLM have also been accepted at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) in Baltimore and the Caribbean Regional Conference of Psychology in the Bahamas, both in November 2011.

Jacques Solon Jean, Roger Noel, and Leah James at the APA Convention in DC

On My Return

lauraflynn — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:02:34 +0000

photo 1997©Jennifer Cheek Pantaléon

By Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January last year destroyed up to 5,000 schools and 80% of the country’s already weak university infrastructure. The primary school in Port-au-Prince that I attended as a small boy collapsed with more than 200 students inside. The weight of the state nursing school killed 150 future nurses. The state medical school was levelled. The exact number of students, teachers, professors, librarians, researchers, academics and administrators lost during those 65 seconds that irrevocably changed Haiti will never be known. But what we do know is that it cannot end there.

The exceptional resilience demonstrated by the Haitian people during and after the deadly earthquake reflects the intelligence and determination of parents, especially mothers, to keep their children alive and to give them a better future, and the eagerness of youth to learn – all this despite economic challenges, social barriers, political crisis, and psychological trauma. Even though their basic needs have increased exponentially, their readiness to learn is manifest. This natural thirst for education is the foundation for a successful learning process: what is freely learned is best learned.

Of course, learning is strengthened and solidified when it occurs in a safe, secure and normal environment. Hence our responsibility to promote social cohesion, democratic growth, sustainable development, self-determination; in short, the goals set forth for this new millennium. All of which represent steps towards a return to a better environment.

Education has been a top priority since the first Lavalas government – of which I was president – was sworn into officeunder Haiti’s amended democratic constitution on 7 February 1991 (and removed a few months later). More schools were built in the 10 years between 1994, when democracy was restored, and 2004 – when Haiti’s democracy was once again violated – than between 1804 to 1994: one hundred and ninety-five new primary schools and 104 new public high schools constructed and/or refurbished.

The 12 January earthquake largely spared the Foundation for Democracy I founded in 1996. Immediately following the quake, thousands accustomed to finding a democratic space to meet, debate and receive services, came seeking shelter and help. Haitian doctors who began their training at the foundation’s medical school rallied to organised clinics at the foundation and at tent camps across the capital. They continue to contribute tirelessly to the treatment of fellow Haitians who have been infected by cholera. Their presence is a pledge to reverse the dire ratio of one doctor for every 11,000 Haitians.

Youths, who through the years have participated in the foundation’s multiple literacy programmes, volunteered to operate mobile schools in these same tent camps. In partnership with a group from the University of Michigan in the US, post-traumatic counselling sessions were organised and university students trained to help themselves and to help fellow Haitians begin the long journey to healing. A year on, young people and students look to the foundation’s university to return to its educational vocation and help fill the gaping national hole left on the day the earth shook in Haiti.

Will the deepening destabilising political crisis in Haiti prevent students achieving academic success? I suppose most students, educators and parents are exhausted by the complexity of such a dramatic and painful crisis. But I am certain nothing can extinguish their collective thirst for education.

The renowned American poet and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that “we learn geology the morning after the earthquake”. What we have learned in one long year of mourning after Haiti’s earthquake is that an exogenous plan of reconstruction – one that is profit-driven, exclusionary, conceived of and implemented by non-Haitians – cannot reconstruct Haiti. It is the solemn obligation of all Haitians to join in the reconstruction and to have a voice in the direction of the nation.

As I have not ceased to say since 29 February 2004, from exile in Central Africa, Jamaica and now South Africa, I will return to Haiti to the field I know best and love: education. We can only agree with the words of the great Nelson Mandela, that indeed education is a powerful weapon for changing the world.

(this piece was originally published in the Guardian on February 4, 2011, you can see the original here)

Youth Leadership in Haiti

lauraflynn — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:34:36 +0000

On Wednesday February 3, more than seven hundred young people gathered at the Aristide Foundation for Democracy to launch the Aristide-Lavalas Youth league (Ligue de la Jeunesse Aristido-Lavalasse). The goal of the Youth League is to bring young people together to vitalize Haiti’s democracy and to initiate service projects to help their communities in the fields of education and health.

Each department of Haiti was represented by a delegation of 10-12 young people all of whom made the long trip to Port-au-Prince because they want to contribute to the building of a participatory democracy in Haiti. Early in the morning of Feb 2, these departmental youth delegations met for a four-hour discussion/ workshop in the conference room of the AFD to share perspectives, brainstorm ideas, and create an orientation for the new organization. Pyschologist Wladimir Constant facilitated this dialogue titled, “The Leadership of the Young.”

Toussaint Hilaire, director of the AFD addresses the youth delegates

For the second stage of the event the delegations came downstairs, and onto the stage of the auditorium, where they were welcomed with thunderous applause by over 700 other young people from the department of the West (Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas), who gathered in the auditorium to welcome the national delegates and to officially launch this Youth League.

Much of the organizing to launch the Youth League was done by young UNIFA graduates together with the leadership of the Foundation. These young doctors who began their medical training at UniFA before the 2004 coup d’etat, and then finished their training in Cuba, are now back in Haiti and have been central to all the AFD’s efforts to assist in the wake of the earthquake. This initiative also builds on the Foundation’s efforts over the past year to empower young people to be at the forefront of service in wake of the quake (though mobile clinics staffed by young doctors, mobile schools staffed by young high school and college graduates, and our youth-led mental health project Soulaje Lespri Moun, and the the reopening of UNIFA ).

Youth Delegates on the stage at the AFD, Feb. 2, 2011

The launching of this youth league represents the determination of all the young people who have came together on February 3, to offer their energy, creativity, and vitality towards a new Haiti.

Rose Yvica Roche Volcy and Yves Merry Stuart Roche were the MC’s for the ceremony in the auditorium. Hancy Pierre Louis, professor of economics and former Vice Governor of the Central Bank, gave a presentation on Haiti’s economy.

Hancy Pierre Louis addressing the Youth League

Wladimir Constant, spoke again on the centrality of youth leadership, and Toussaint Hilaire, the Director of the Arsitide Foundation spoke about the importance of youth gaining confidence in themselves through service to the country and offered perspectives on the kinds of civic and service projects the Youth League might undertake, such as literacy programs for adults, and educational projects for children who are not in school.

Joseph Marc Anderson, a youth representative then spoke on behalf of the league and presented its charter to those present.

A cultural presentation by Kolonb Dor, the youth troupe of the Aristide Foundation followed.

We look forward to seeing this new organization evolve and flourish. Only Haitians can rebuild Haiti.

Relief for the Spirit

lauraflynn — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:18:38 +0000

AFD Lay Mental Health Workers lead a workshop at a camp in Tabarre

Aristide Foundation Lay Mental Health Workers Lead Workshops in the Camps

Four months after January 12 the experience of that day — the terror and the losses — remain vivid and present in the minds of all Haitians who survived the quake. Nearly everyone has some degree of post-traumatic stress with hyper-vigilance, startle responses, sleep difficulties, intrusive memories, fear, anxiety, grief, and anger widespread. Even before the quake Haiti’s mental health structure was nearly non-existent. Right now for the majority of the population of Port-au-Prince, who are now living in tents in refugee settlements, mental health care is both inaccessible and foreign to their experience.

Beginning in late April the AFD in cooperation with a group of social workers and doctoral students from the University of Michigan began working together to to create a Haitian-model for lay mental health workers to reach people in the camps. Ten extraordinary young Haitian college students spent a week receiving training from Leah James, a social worker and doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Todd Favorite and Dr. Mike
Messina, psychologists at the PTSD clinic at the Ann Arbor VA. (Read Leah’s Huffington Post Article Describing the evolution of this project here).

A Haitian psychologist who has been providing mental health care at the AFD weekly clinics signed on to advise the project, and provide ongoing mentoring for the young mental health workers. Together they created a culturally appropriate 90-minute psycho-education and coping skills curriculum. The project that has emerged from this collaboration we are calling Soulaje Lespri Moun, or Relief for the Spirit. Soulaje Lespri Moun is an expansion of the AFD Mobile School project. For the past four weeks The Lay Mental Health Workers have been working at two of the mobile school sites (at Carradeux and Building 2004), leading workshops for parents of the children who’ve attended the mobile schools.

US Mental Health Professionals training AFD Lay Mental Health Workers in April

The goal of the workshops is to decrease stigma, shame, fear, and self-blame and increase ongoing healing and communication within families and communities. The Lay Mental Health Workers first encourage participants to share their experiences and talk about the symptoms of trauma they are experiencing. They work on trying to “normalize” the responses, that is to emphasize that it is a normal human response to continue to feel that the ground is shaking, to be hyper-vigilant etc. And then they teach basic relaxation and self-soothing techniques designed to reduce symptoms of physiological hyper-arousal and thus decrease anxiety, fear, irritability, startle response, bodily aches and pains, and sleep difficulty.

Soulaje Lespri Moun is not an effort to train mental health professionals with the skills needed to work with the seriously mentally ill (although this is needed, too). Rather, it is a movement toward widespread dissemination of education and coping skills to benefit the general public in the belief that some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress among the population can be alleviated through basic psycho-education about common reactions to trauma paired with training in relaxation and other coping strategies.

We began the project as a pilot to train this first group of 10 mental health workers, and find out how participants in the camps responded to the workshops. Given the conditions of life in the camps — hunger first and foremost — we wondered if people would be motivated to participate. Initial results are heartening, in fact inspiring, largely because of the dedication and determination of the young people carrying out the project. They report that despite some initial resistance to a project that offers only words, they are having success drawing people into the sessions. Participants report relief from some of their symptoms, and most importantly, they say they are sharing the skills they’ve learned with family and friends. For instance many participants report that they do the breathing and other self-soothing exercises nightly with their partners and children.

We would very much like to expand the project and train at least 10 more mental health workers in late-June. To do that we need to find the additional funding, most of which will go to paying Haitians who staff the project.

An AFD psycholgist, and lay mental health worker lead a workshop for kids at a camp in Tabarre

Summary of objectives

To quickly and efficiently provide free basic mental health education and coping skills to residents of Port-au-Prince IDP camps
To develop an effective, culturally-appropriate protocol for presenting mental health education, coping skills, and relaxation techniques in a group setting and to evaluate the effectiveness of this model in reducing symptoms of PTSD and depression among recipients of the intervention AND among the lay mental health workers implementing the intervention.
To provide practical training and employment to young Haitian high school and college grads.
To create a sustainable system of lay mental health provision which will ultimately be maintained entirely by Haitian organizations and workers.
To establish a safe and efficient pathway for US volunteer mental health professionals who will provide ongoing training to lay mental health workers. (All foreign volunteers will pay or raise money to cover their expenses. Any funds raised by the Aristide Foundation for this project go directly to project expenses in Haiti. )

If you would like to support this work tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

For more information on the the Lay Mental Health Worker Project and on volunteer opportunities for international mental health professionals wishing to support this project please visit: http://mentalhealthhaiti.wordpress.com/