By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
Caritas International - Sierra Leone Tuesday commenced a three-day training workshop for pastoral and psychosocial councilors in Freetown. The move is part of effort to help provide psychosocial healing and support for over ten thousand Sierra Leoneans affected by the Ebola outbreak.
Caritas is a religious organization that comprises of different catholic missions globally. In Sierra Leone, its National Executive Director, John Bull, said the program was to address trauma, stigmatization and other serious issues that were affecting orphans, widows and other people whose lives had been shattered by the Ebola disease.
Bull said the organization was planning to implement development projects which aim to provide food, improve health and address other problems affecting the social wellbeing of all Sierra Leoneans.
“The church has a pivotal role to provide support to all kind of psychological problems,” he said, adding that Caritas organizes such trainings because there was a need to address the serious trauma and other mental problems affecting a huge number of infected and affected people.
Speaking before the commencement of the training, the Head of the Catholic Church in Sierra Leone, Dr Edward Tamba Charles, said the workshop was meant to enhance the intervention of the Catholic mission to providing psychosocial healing for Ebola affected persons through catholic churches.
He said the Catholic community realized that the Ebola outbreak had affected citizens in all works of life, adding that the EVD had also left thousands of children orphaned and survivors of the virus dejected and homeless.
“We are looking at the development of the whole human being because we are preparing people to live in full,” Archbishop Tamba Charles said.
Therefore, he went on, the Catholic mission decided to conduct the training to give participants the requisite training on how to provide psychosocial treatment for people who have been seriously affected by the Ebola epidemic which has ruined the socio-economic development of the country.
The archbishop said the training was also meant to complement the effort of the government of Sierra Leone to end the Ebola epidemic that started in May last year.
Though there are a lot of psychological counseling ongoing, he noted, the church`s intervention will be unique in that it would be providing pastoral psycho social healing. He explained that participants were expected to give back to their respective parishes and communities having benefitted from the spiritual and psychosocial training.
Reverend Father Peter Conteh, Executive director of Caritas International in Freetown, explained that the idea to implement such a project came after a meeting held by the Catholic Church in London with heads of Catholic churches in the affected countries, including Sierra Leone, with a view of discussing the role of religious leaders in the fight against the epidemic.
He said Ebola had affected citizens in diverse ways, and that there was a need for religious leaders of catholic churches and its partners to provide healing for the many survivors of the disease.
“We need to support our church members to become ambassadors to help mobilize a psychosocial team in their different parishes, to help priests to heal the trauma of people,” Father Conteh said.
He said the church is concerned about everything ranging from the economy, politics and health hence it affected human well being.
Conteh said participants, after completing the training, would work as support staff that would help Caritas to identify and respond to the need of affected persons.
Deputy Director of Children’s Affairs at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Joyce Kamara, said the government was aware of the stigmatization that survivors in their respective communities were faced with and therefore had been working with partners in providing psychosocial support and also in addressing their challenges.
“Ebola did not infect everybody but [it] affected everybody,” she said.
Kamara encouraged other institutions to join her ministry to help provide psychosocial treatment and support to affected individuals so as to prevent mental and other illnesses, nothing that a huge number of people are suffering from trauma due to the ordeals of the epidemic.
“We are happy that the institution is training religious leaders to help government provide counseling for Ebola survivors in their respective Churches and communities,” she said.
(C) Politico 23/07/15
