Mental health care for community development.

The North Kivu region is an area of insecurity, wars and pandemics, but the population residing there is courageous, resilient and persistent, although these people, direct victims of atrocities, live with physical and psychological trauma.

This is the case for most of our beneficiaries who are victims of the recent volcanic eruption of May 22, 2021 and victims of several other types of disasters such as wars and regional conflicts that place them in vulnerable situations.

While identifying the field of execution of the TWAWEZA SHINDA project, we observed several consequences due to the disasters presented above, notably the problem of living together in harmony, withdrawal, anger and sadness. And as we intervene in the field of mental health, we had to act: So we initiated a program of integrated accompaniment with a psychosocial approach with them and this, through listening and discussion groups.

Through the listening sessions, our beneficiaries express their problems, their feelings and release their inner burdens and wounds to our psychosocial assistants and through our discussion groups, they reflect together on means of personal development and on community problems through themes such as hygiene, family planning, positive masculinity, resolution of regional conflicts, self-fulfillment and socio-economic reintegration, and this with the aim of rebuilding themselves, reintegrating and regaining social warmth.

Through this mental health program, our beneficiaries learn to express themselves, to free themselves, to reconcile with themselves and with others, to have fun through our animation sessions with community animators, and to make love and sharing more of a nature than a quality. Today, we observe the smiles on the lips of some people, formerly with suicidal urges, who regain a taste for life and who testify to this to further help those other people darkened by depression and despair.

A gesture that we consider as a step towards the development as much personal as community because it is more primordial to think of the mental one in order to allow this last one to function in favor of the physical one and after to work on the environment; It is among our steps to follow in order to pursue our mission which is the one to see a world where each person has a voice and the capacity to realize his full potential and this, for the good and the participation in the efforts of development particularly of our country and more precisely of our province of North-Kivu.