Hidaya Project Website

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These are pictures of the hope that The Hidaya Project can bring to people traumatized by conflict around the world.

The Hidaya approach heals trauma, builds tolerance, and renews hope through educational programs that teach self-care, community awareness, and peace building.

our partners

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The Global Learning Group, a division of the Education Development Center, is a partner in this important project.

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine is a partner in this project.

hidaya project overview

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The new Hidaya Project book has been published. Click here to order.

1. The Need

The psychosocial effects of conflict, civil strife, and war are usually acknowledged but seldom effectively addressed on a large scale, especially in developing countries. Innocent people, caught up in the violence happening around them, become psychologically scarred, distraught, angry and suspicious of others. There is widespread post-traumatic stress disorder, the disempowerment of individuals, families, and communities, and efforts at conflict-resolution and peace building become extremely difficult. Increasingly the world is witnessing this large-scale psychological and emotional damage in the PalestinianTerr itories and countries such as Bosnia, Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, and Sudan.

Consequently, there is an urgent humanitarian need to address at scale the psychosocial consequences of conflict and war in developing countries. Fortunately, the Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM) has developed a low cost educational intervention that has been used effectively to address the psychological trauma of conflict and war on a large scale.

These include participation in clinically supervised trauma healing self-care and peer support programs, and trust and tolerance-building educational activities.

What needs to be done now is to bring together tested trauma and tolerance models, develop an integrated curriculum and test the effectiveness of this new model that can be used on a population wide level in conflict and post-conflict countries. Through scientific assessment of the outcomes of the model, we, the project implementers, will provide the data that will stimulate funding of significantly larger projects in the Middle East and other areas of conflict.

During the process of trauma healing, people come to realize that their emotions are a normal response to an abnormal situation. Once they learn how to ‘self-regulate’ their moods and behavior – through techniques of self-expression and self-care – then they regain their self-esteem and their ability to again access their inner sources of strength and become effective members of their community.

In addition, by integrating these techniques of self-expression into an intensive group process, they are able to experience the humanity of the ‘other’.

The tolerance portion builds directly on the trauma portion of the model. When people are able to retain some control over their physiology and their feelings, this opens a door for them to experience empathy for the other. This helps them to develop a deeper understanding of the differences and commonalities that exist between them and to find ways to move into a more collaborative and productive relationships at school and work and through community outreach and education programs.

A successful clinical trial of trauma healing and tolerance building interventions in conflict countries will lead to the mobilization of larger amounts of funding for these activities. Such a clinical trial will build on evidence-based studies that document the successful use of these interventions in post-conflict settings. It will give interested foundations and government donors the confidence they need to feel that an investment is worthwhile.

2. The Proposed Solution

The core formula to address violence and promote peace came from Hisham Kullab, a Muslim community leader living in Khan Yunis, Gaza. He has been a peace worker for 15 years in Gaza. In his own transformation process stimulated by studies in trauma and resilience in the US he became convinced that only through dealing with trauma first can his fellow Palestinians move beyond personal trauma induced anger and hatred to embrace genuine tolerance and peacebuilding.

With private support, Paul Sully and Ron Israel of the Education Development Center, who had already launched a successful youth-focused program based in Ramallah, began developing a program model with Hisham. Dr James Gordon, Founder and Director of the Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM), and his staff joined the effort to develop this innovative program known as “Hidaya”. (Hidaya means “guidance” in Arabic). Importantly, CMBM’s successful trauma reduction work in Gaza and Israel helped inform the technical approach captured in the design of the project.

Hidaya will train local professionals how to work with a group of 160 Palestinian female and male youth and adults, whose psychological profile is created, in part, by the violence happening around them. They will include those who are psychologically scarred, distraught, angry and suspicious of others. Many will suffer from anxiety, depression, anti-social behavior, and other characteristics of war-induced trauma.

Over two 12-week intervention periods Hidaya will demonstrate, using a randomized control group, a marked reduction in the incidence and severity of post-traumatic stress (and “continuing” trauma) disorder in this population, and an increase in the ability of participants to positively interact with others and better contribute to the well being of their families and communities.

3. The Implementing Organizations

Hidaya is a project of two US non-profits with operating presence in Gaza: the Education Development Center and the Center for Mind Body Medicine.

Education Development Center Inc. (EDC) is a 50-year old non-profit educational research and development organization based in the United States with more than 335 projects in over 50 countries. EDC is dedicated to enhancing learning, promoting health, and fostering a deeper understanding of the world. EDC provides formal and non-formal educational services and technical assistance to U.S. and foreign corporations, government agencies, private foundations, nonprofit organizations, and universities.

See also: www.edc.org

Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM) Established in 1991, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) is a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization located in Washington>, DC, founded on the principle of teaching and empowering people to help themselves through personal crises. This program has guided more than a thousand health and mental health professionals, teachers and community leaders who are living and working in devastated areas to deal with their own stress and trauma, as well as teaching them how to provide effective group support and then to disseminate what they have learned throughout their communities.

See also: www.cmbm.org

Education Development Center Inc. (EDC) Relevant EDC work includes training youth leaders in Haiti , formation of a national Palestinian youth forum for dialogue and action in the West Bank, nurturing youth club development in Afghanistan, creating a global curriculum on humanitarian law, development of innovative youth focus group tools for needs assessment work, and coordination of a youth service and learning community among several countries.

EDC has over three decades of experience in building the leadership capacity of youth and young adults. We have developed tools, processes, and materials that engage young people in leadership activities, provide them with new skills, and enhance their ability to provide leadership at the community and national level. EDC’s youth programs demonstrate our ability to achieve citizenship goals, such as strengthen democratic processes; improve the quality of basic and post secondary education, including teacher training curriculum content, community empowerment, and digital readiness; promote the development of employable skills; and provide access and opportunity to women in an effort to enhance their marketable skills and gain economic independence

Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM) The CMBM’s Global Outreach Program is designed to provide safe, effective, humane and easily accessible mental health help to populations in crisis—those suffering from stress, anxiety, and/or depression, during or after wars, violence, or natural disasters. The CMBM model, initially developed in programs for inner city (primarily Black and Hispanic) youth in Washington, D.C. and for university medical students and faculty and people with life-threatening illness, has for ten years, been used with psychological trauma on a population-wide level. CMBM’s Global Outreach Program began in post-war Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia<. This program has been active in Israel and Gaza since 2002 as well as in post-Katrina New Orleans and it was used with New York City firefighters and their families after 9/11.

The CMBM’s work has been demonstrated in scientific investigations to be powerfully effective in reducing stress, improving mood and enhancing the competence and optimism of professional trainees and in helping children to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As a training of trainers’ model, the Global Outreach Program has helped tens of thousands of people suffering from psychological trauma and stress.

5. Key Areas to Accomplish Through Hidaya

Engage religious, civic and community leaders in Gaza to support the project.

Complete the Hidaya curriculum.

Choose appropriate measurement instruments.

Train Palestinian trainers in methodology.

Deliver the Hidaya training to 160 female and male, youth and adult Gazans using randomized control trials.

Measure and evaluate changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors for project participants.

Write articles on the program for publication in professional journals that address trauma, conflict, tolerance and peacebuilding.

Present findings to policy specialists, practitioners, program mangers, donors in governments, and public and private entities interested in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in the Middle East and elsewhere.

6. The Opportunities

The Hidaya Project’s significance extends beyond Gaza. Hidaya will generate the measurement and intervention data and information that are needed to increase support to address some of the root causes of political violence and intolerance in conflict countries around the world.

video

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Healing The Wounds of War is a project of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. This video shows how CMBM's work is delivering trauma-healing programs to people in crisis around the world.

Hidaya builds on CMBM's work, adding a tolerance-building component to move traumatized populations towards peace.

blog

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advisory board

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Curriculum and Training Technical Advisory Support

• Barbara Powell (Massachusetts, USA)
• Claudia Cohen (New Jersey, USA)
• Jim Russell (Samoa)
• Justine Ickes ( Connecticut, USA)
• Mahjabeen Rafiuddin (Kentucky, USA)
• Mandy Fessenden Brauer (Egypt)
• Stephanie Pollack (Oregon, USA)

Bios of Curriculum and Training

Barbara Powell

Barbara Schieffelin Powell is an educational consultant whose work over the past 25 years has focused on teacher education, curriculum development and program evaluation. Most recently she has been project director of Exploring Humanitarian Law, a worldwide curriculum on international humanitarian law—the Geneva Conventions—taught in over 60 countries for youth 13-18. The curriculum was designed by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). For this program she organized and facilitated teacher training workshops in Geneva and Malaysia, evaluated pilot curricula in Jamaica, Thailand and Morocco, and helped transfer the curriculum to the Internet. Previously she was significantly involved in other EDC curriculum projects including German versions of “Man: A Course of Study” and “People and Technology” as well as “The Role of Women in American Society” and “Exploring Childhood.”

Other current projects involve evaluating programs to bring Shakespeare to incarcerated adolescent girls through the Actors Shakespeare Project and evaluating the educational component of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. As a researcher Dr. Powell has studied high school change for the Coalition of Essential Schools, then at Brown University, evaluated Teach for America’s summer training institute and assessed the impact of arts programs on students. Prior clients have been Polaroid Corporation and McLean Hospital.

She has taught secondary school English and African history in Malawi, under the auspices of the African-American Institute and in the US. She has been Head of Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA and has trained teachers at Wellesley College. She also taught at Harvard University and the University of Bielefeld, Germany. She is co-author (with Tina Blythe and David Allen) of Looking Together at Student Work (Teachers College Press 2007) which has recently gone into its second edition. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Dr. Powell received MAT and Ed.D. degrees from Harvard University.

Claudia Cohen

Dr. Claudia Cohen is President and Founder of The Third Alternative, LLC Consulting Group. She has more than fifteen years of experience as an organizational and leadership consultant with both corporate and nonprofit/ public clients. In her decade-long experience inside corporations, she has served both as an ombudsman and as an internal consultant. . Dr. Cohen has done extensive work with organizations, supporting both structural organizational change and individual employee development. She has particular expertise in helping organizations and individuals learn to increase leadership capacity, manage change, create strategies for dealing with conflict and strengthen skills in areas such as communication, management effectiveness, influencing and emotional intelligence.

Dr. Cohen is often engaged to design and facilitate meetings, retreats and conferences and has earned a reputation for her ability to engage participants, encouraging candor and openness, while keeping the session on task. She is skilled in using large group techniques (e.g., Future Search, Open Space) and has facilitated conferences designed to support visioning and planning around the identification of common ground.

She has worked with dozens of executives as a leadership coach and has had a very high rate of repeat engagements and referrals (~90 %.). Her work has been described as “masterful” and she is praised for her outstanding ability to speak “truth to power” while partnering with leaders as they take on the difficult work of self-discovery and transformation.

Dr. Cohen’s expertise in conflict transformation developed during her years as an organizational ombudsman and in her subsequent work as a civil and EEOC mediator. She delivers workshops on negotiation and conflict-resolution skills, and includes these topics in the management, communication and organizational change courses she teaches as well. Dr. Cohen is an adjunct professor in the graduate program at Stevens Institute of Technology and also teaches workshops for Stevens funded by the NJ Department of Labor.

In the nonprofit/ public sector, her clients have included The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict/ United Nations, NY Presbyterian Hospital, the ACLU-NJ, the United Way, Interns for Peace and several faith-based organizations. She has also worked with civic programs such as AmericaSpeaks (e.g., facilitating post-9/11 discussions.) As a consultant and trainer, Dr. Cohen’s corporate clients have included AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Ortho Biotech, Cordis, Ciba Chemical, ITT, ThorLabs, Inc., Bobst, RAD Data, Antenna Software and AudioCodes.

Dr. Cohen is a member of The Association for Conflict Resolution, The NJ Association of Professional Mediators (co-chair of the Membership Committee), the Future Search Network and is an Envoy to the UN Office of her faith-community. She has presented and published her work at conferences and in trade journals. Dr. Cohen earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, San Diego and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Stanford University. She has also completed post-graduate certifications in mediation, ombudsry, peace-building education, systems thinking, dialogue, large-scale organizational change, leadership development and negotiation.

Jim Russell
Common themes running through Jim’s career are youth development and education. Almost 7 years with the YMCA provided opportunities to work in Northern Minnesota; Houston and San Antonio, Texas; and Lima, Peru; plus, another two years of direct youth development work in Thailand in the Peace Corps.

Following 6 years as a public elementary school teacher in Kauai, Hawaii, Jim’s work in youth development shifted to focus on training and developing skills of youth development workers. His work on Peace Corps’ staff has included skills development for Peace Corps Project Managers, Peace Corps Volunteers, and Host Country Counterparts in 17 countries who work with community youth in school and out-of-school.

In 2005 Jim worked as a Technical Advisor for Youth Development Programming for 11 months with the US Embassy Baghdad, Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. Working with programming and training staff of the Iraqi Ministry of Youth and Sports, he introduced principles and practices of Positive Youth Development, Developmental Assets for Youth Development, Youth Worker Competencies, and Project Design and Management.

Currently, Jim works as Pacific Sub-Regional Program and Training Officer for the Peace Corps, developing skills of Peace Corps staff in 6 countries, in the following areas: project design and management; training design and evaluation; monitoring, reporting and evaluation; experiential education; adult learning; and, positive youth development.

Justine Ickes

Justine is a dynamic and creative thinker with over twenty years of experience in international program design and management for education and youth projects throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Pacific and the United States. Her areas of expertise include community-based programming, e-learning, curriculum design, instructional product development, staff development, training of trainers, and cross-cultural training.

Ms. Ickes has worked for diverse organizations, from the North American Cultural Association in Madrid, Spain, to the Peace Corps in Washington, DC, to the Educational Development Corporation in El Salvador, to the New School for Social Research and the French Culinary Institute in New York.

From 1994 to 2004, Justine worked for the Peace Corps as a trainer, global language training specialist, and education program manager for the Europe, Mediterranean & Asia (EMA) region. Her significant achievements include establishing training operations in Peace Corps/Eritrea during a post-conflict period, designing the first interactive web-based language training for applicants and volunteers, spearheading youth development programming in the EMA region, and managing the creation of the Nonformal Education Manual http://www.peacecorps.gov/library/pdf/m0042_nfemanual1.pdf.

Since 2004, Justine has continued her work with international non-governmental organizations and educational institutions, primarily focusing on improving programming and training, creating innovative learning materials, and coaching staff. For USAID and EDC she facilitated in-service workshops in El Salvador on integrated music education for pre-school and kindergarten teachers. As an adjunct professor for The New School for Social Research she designed and facilitated on-line teacher education training courses. For the French Culinary Institute Justine created the curriculum and learning materials for the language and culture component of an Italian culinary program. She is currently the Director of Programs & Training for Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), a Canadian NGO that promotes social and economic development through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

A gifted communicator and innovative educator, Justine enjoys helping people discover, grow and live to the fullest.

Ms. Ickes holds a Master of Arts in Anthropology from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Georgetown University. Ms. Ickes is fluent in Spanish.

Mahjabeen Rafiuddin
Mahjabeen is currently the Director of Student Diversity Engagement at the Office for Multicultural and Student Affairs at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. She is known in the community for her work in youth and community related collaborative efforts, youth and adult diversity training, and innovative youth leadership programming. She received four major awards for her service and youth work. Mahjabeen has TEN years of professional youth and adult leadership experience. She was the founder of the Lexington Youth Leadership Academy (LYLA) -- a three-year premier diversity related leadership youth program for high school teens. Mahjabeen has been certified as a trainer on Advancing Youth Development: A Curriculum for Youth Workers by the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research in collaboration with the National Network for Youth, Inc. Mahjabeen is serving as the advisor to the Mayor’s Youth Council for 9 years, this is a service and leadership oriented program of Partners for Youth supporting youth from Lexington, Kentucky. Mahjabeen has traveled around and presented workshops at many National and State level conferences. Mahjabeen’s professional goals to educate and empower young adults and adults in the areas of cross-cultural understanding, appreciation of diversity, race-relations and active community involvement originated from her experience of being a first-generation immigrant from Bangladesh. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Berea College, Berea and Masters in Social Work from the University of Kentucky. She is committed to living all her life eliminating bias, bigotry, and oppression of all forms. She is fluent in Bengali and English.

Mandy Fessenden Brauer

Dr. Mandy, as she likes to be called, has spent more than forty years working in nationally and internationally for and with children in psychotherapy clinical settings and in private practice. Her patients spanned social and economic spectrum but her work has focused on disenfranchised and minority children in foster care, victims of crime, physically and sexually abused, terminally ill, traumatized and delinquent and those with cranio-facial anomalies and those who are severely mentally ill.

In 1989 Dr. Mandy moved to the Occupied Palestinian Territories where she worked at a Gazan child development clinic where she assessed children, helped develop treatment plans and trained staff. She, also, was a member of the first mental health assessment team to assess the needs of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel, the results of which were published by Birzeit University in 1991. At that time also, Dr. Mandy had a book commissioned and accepted for publication by The League of Arab States, Palestinian Children of the Diaspora and Their Friends, an analysis of artwork done by Palestinian children of the diaspora and Egyptian children after seeing an exhibit of Palestinian culture and life. In addition to residing in Gaza, Dr. Mandy has lived and worked in Yerevan, Armenia and in Cairo, Egypt.

Dr. Mandy has designed and conducted mental health assessments, program development and program implementation in a variety of international settings including in an institution for more than 1300 children. Dr. Mandy was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at The American University in Cairo and was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Cairo University Medical School, Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Mandy has given talks and professional training workshops on topics that include: Childhood Suicide, Working with Terminally Ill Children, Preparing Children for Medical Procedures, Play Therapy Techniques, Treating Abused Children and Loss and Grief workshops specifically designed for Palestinian mental health workers. She also designed and implemented a USAID-funded program which trained more than 300 Egyptian school physicians and mental health workers about how to listen to, understand and intervene effectively with normal children.

Dr. Mandy is published in Arabic in Eve, a high circulation Egyptian women’s magazine that includes a piece about pediatric cancer and a three-part article about the plight of children in war-torn countries. She has also published six fiction books for children that deal with understanding and coping with difficult psychological issues.

She has her MSW from the UCLA School of Social Welfare and her PhD from the Graduate Center (Los Angles) for Child Development and Psychotherapy.

Stephanie Pollack

Stephanie is an interculturally and artistically focused experiential educator and trainer. She develops and leads innovative educational programs, trainings, and teambuilding sessions around the globe for universities, museums, not-for-profits, and corporations, and has done so for 16 years with people ages 7 - 77. Stephanie has traveled extensively in 6 continents, living in Australia, Thailand, and Nepal as well as numerous places in the USA.

With the advent of her consulting business, Creative Facilitations (www.creativefacilitations.net), Stephanie uses her extensive facilitation experience and educational program development expertise with clients from all sectors. She specializes in using creative experiential strategies – Theatre of the Oppressed, improvisational theatre, visual arts, and literary arts – for community building, diversity and intercultural communication training, leadership development, gender empowerment, retreat facilitation, teaching teachers how to teach interactively, and start-up educational travel programming including intercultural immersion and worldwide service-learning. Clients include: The National MultiCultural Institute, International Partnership for Service Learning and Leadership, National Labor College, Bard College, University of Maryland, Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, Interlocken Center for Experiential Learning, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Institute of American Indian Arts, Global Routes, Critical Pathfinders, Teambonding, The Friends World Program, and Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. (The Scholar Ship).

Stephanie earned a B.A. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in Leadership, Education, and the Arts from Long Island University, and numerous certificates (including Teaming Across Difference, Training for International Transitions, and Game Design) from various professional associations including the Intercultural Communication Institute and the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. Stephanie was chosen as one of 18 mid-career professionals from around the world to participate in Rotary International Foundation’s Peace and Conflict Studies Program, a three-month professional development certificate program based at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

donate

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Your support of The Hidaya Project will help build a new foundation of peace and hope among the traumatized people of the Middle East.

The residents in these war-torn areas can learn to heal old emotional wounds and face the future with empathy, tolerance, and hope. Without them, the politicians and peacekeepers don’t stand a chance.

Without you, the Hidaya project doesn’t stand a chance.

Hidaya is raising private funding for its initial 15-month pilot program’s $600,000 budget.

Only private funds are being sought. Palestinians are highly suspicious of US government intentions and therefore funds from that source would taint the program. However, their belief in the good will of the American people remains strong.

Please make a financial contribution. Then tell your friends, host a viewing of the video, “Healing The Wounds Of War,” and order copies of this book.

Invest Funds • Contribute your comments • Refer Others

How to Invest: Please make checks payable to: “Education Development Center” and on the memo line write: “Hidaya Project”.

Mail to: Maureen Malley
Global Learning Group - Hidaya Project
Education Development Center
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458-1060

If you wish to do a direct bank-to-bank transfer, please call or email Maureen Malley, 617-618-2628, for details.

Interested in helping in other ways? Any feedback or questions? Please contribute your comments.

Want to refer others? Please submit their names and contact information. We will send them a copy of this book with a note that says you thought they would be interested.

contact

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Educational Inquiries
Mr. Paul Sully

Fundraising Inquiries
Mr. Paul Sully

The Education Development Center, Inc.
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458
Phone: (617) 969-7100
Fax: (617) 969-5979
TTY: (617) 964-5448
edc.org

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine
5225 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 414
Washington, DC 20015
cmbm.org