Search Results for: feed

2025 June, Feed & Heal Starving Children, Namugongo Slums, Kampala, Uganda @MeaningfulWorld

2025 Feed & Heal the starving children in Namugongo Slums, Kampala, Uganda

2024 Feed the starving children in Kampala Slums, Uganda (1)

ATOP MEANINGFULWORLD MIDDLE EAST TRAUMA RELIEF MISSION TARGETS REFUGEES AND SERVICE PROVIDERS Workshops, trainings, healing, empowering and educating for continued psychosocial,physical, ecological and spiritual recovery in Palestine, Jordan and with Syrian Refugees Susan Smith and Dr. Ani Kalayjian     Imagine you are forced to leave your home in the middle of the night with nothing but your pajamas, witnessing people being shot to death in front of you, while hearing loud bombing and shelling at your neighbor’s home, not knowing where to go? How to save your life and protect your children and family? Imagine not having anything to eat or drink, and not being able to shut the hunger cries of your child? This is only a small picture of what is happening in Syria. ATOP Meaningfulworld, continuing its humanitarian outreach in the Middle East embarked in a Humanitarian Mission in May 2014, to transform and help heal some of these emotional wounds. Although our direct outreach was to 500 individuals, our indirect outreach estimated at 30,000. The focus of this “Empowerment for Peace Building” mission was to observe, learn, educate, conduct research, share, transform and heal the wounds of direct, collective, vicarious and intergenerational trauma. ATOP Meaningfulworld’s Team comprised of Dr. Ani Kalayjian, Susan Smith, and her daughter Dareen Qaddoumi. In Jordan we were joined by Kathy Hansen and her son, Kier Hansen. We first began working in Palestine, as the continued trauma has had a severe scars and The Association for Trauma Outreach & Prevention (ATOP) reactions in the community, especially with the youth. We delivered workshops and trainings to Palestinian refugees and mental health, education, and community-based service providers in the West Bank’s Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Al-Faraa Refugee Camp in Nablus, the Palestine Union of Social Workers and Psychologists in Al-Khalil (Hebron), and as well as to professionals at Bayt Sahour YMCA. Participants ubiquitously spoke of ongoing suffering, hardship, loss and trauma as a result of the 65-year Israeli brutal military occupation, and the hardships and difficulties of being land-locked and strangled by a 450 mile concrete barrier erected by Israel and condemned by United Nations General Assembly resolutions and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Denied the ability to travel to the land of their birth, visit relatives, seek medical assistance or visit holy sites in Jerusalem. Palestinians have suffered and endured inhumane military domination in wholesale violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights for four generations. Workshop and training participants resounded with a clarion call to end the Israel occupation and the resultant collective, horizontal and individual chronic trauma they face daily. ATOP Meaningfulworld started with a full-day of training programs in Bethlehem, Palestine at Aida Refugee Camp’s Lajee Center. Aida Camp was established in 1950 predominantly by refugees from Jerusalem, and currently has a population 9,700. Dr. Kalayjian conducted two workshops, one with youth and the other with women who have experienced trauma of unjust imprisonment of their family members in Israeli prisons. She assessed mild to moderately severe trauma and PTSD symptoms. Adolescents expressed concerns about grades, economic hardship and the dearth of opportunities and daily stress of living with the Israeli-erected wall, and having to spend hours daily at checkpoints. That day, Dr. Kalayjian worked single handedly as two members of the team had been detained for eight hours without cause by Israeli security forces at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. The two Americans were interrogated repeatedly regarding the purpose of their trip and pried for the list of individuals and organizations they would be meeting. Israeli security went into their cell phone directories, email and Facebook accounts before releasing them. That evening our team regrouped and proceeded to Ramallah via the road and checkpoints for those without Israeli citizenship or in the company of an Israeli citizen. The trip from Bethlehem, which takes 30 minutes via the road reserved for Israelis, took more than two hours. Upon entering Ramallah city limits, an Israeli government sign warned Israeli citizens that it is against the law to enter the city, which it described as “dangerous to your lives.” After a restful sleep in the hilly and breezy city of Ramallah, we continued to Al-Faraa Refugee Camp, population 8,000, established in Nablus in 1950 by an influx of refugees originating primarily from the Haifa region of what is now Israel. There the team has the unique opportunity to introduce the 7-Step Integrative Healing Model to 20 male students ages 14-27. At first, the males were reluctant to discuss their emotional issues and when asked to fill out the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, many gave the knee-jerk response, “I have no problem, no trauma.” However, when encouraged over the course of the workshop participants began to open up and disclose pervasive challenges emerged regarding anger and resentment at the Israeli occupation, the wall, and the checkpoints. This unresolved trauma can and has manifested into Horizontal Violence, which occurs when oppression for many years results in a power imbalance whereby the negative response is directed at one’s community, family and self. Dr. Kalayjian faced some resistance in discussing forgiveness as an intrinsic part of the healing process and said, “The vicious cycle of violence continues unless replaced with positive thoughts, behaviors and emotions. War will not regain Palestine; killing will not secure peace, which is a short term reaction, and not a solution. We must come up with positive ways to deal with the frustration. Buddha said, ‘while killing a monster, don’t become that monster.’ In thwarting the cycle of violence in which the oppressed becomes the oppressor, whether through war, internecine violence, domestic violence, Horizontal Violence, familial dysfunction or self-destruction behaviors, she urged workshop attendees to transform themselves and limit the transmission of intergenerational trauma. She encouraged young people to use alternative, proactive and positive means to express themselves such as galvanize and gain global support and personal relief through Social Media. She encouraged every group to take an “Oath for Peace,” and every group without exception