Trauma Awareness Schools: A comprehensive approach that provides a safe learning environment for children

A few years ago, the Turkish Isra Ozer, who was facing a life-threatening illness, found herself exploring new ways of mental health through work and rehabilitation, and a better life through spiritual practices.

A woman who underwent major surgery at the age of 28, her dreams led her to an honest journey to launch the Maya Vakfi Foundation in 2014 to provide psychosocial support for mental health trauma rehabilitation in response to the complex needs of families and children in crisis.

With the aim of providing a safe learning environment for children affected by traumatic life experiences and wars, the Foundation launched in 2017 the “Trauma Awareness Schools” project, which focuses on education through trauma awareness in Turkish schools.

"Trauma Awareness Schools" is one of the six winning projects at the tenth edition of the World Innovation Summit for Education "WISE 2021", which is currently being held in Doha, due to its excellence in factors of innovation, scalability and sustainability, and its impact on individuals and societies.

Israa Ozer expressed her happiness that her project won one of the six awards in "WISE 2021", as well as her presence at this global summit that highlights the role of education and encourages innovation and creativity.

Ozer said that she hopes that the project will contribute to ending the global education crisis, unleashing the potential of the next generation, as well as helping traumatized children and providing them with psychosocial support, adding that the project has achieved through its implementation in Turkish schools the goals of re-teaching behavioral expectations and practicing Alternate behaviors, and restore relationships that may have been damaged.

A comprehensive approach

The Trauma Awareness Schools Project program is a comprehensive, child-centered approach that educates teachers, school administrators, and families about the impact of trauma on a child.

His idea is to transform the classroom into a safe space for children who suffer from traumatic psychological experiences. The intervention here is to apply a multifaceted approach targeting children and their surrounding community, through training courses and workshops with the teaching staff and caregivers.

The program is implemented in 3 stages, the first is concerned with training teachers and school administrators to acquire basic knowledge on how to diagnose symptoms of trauma, the second is based on screening tests and assessments in the classroom to identify children who show signs of stress after severe trauma, and the third is group sessions 8-week psychosocial support run by clinical psychologists at the Maya Vakfi Foundation, which aims to reduce these symptoms in children and enhance their coping skills.

The program included Syrian refugees in Turkey, and an attempt to integrate nearly one million children of school age who moved to Turkish schools in 2017, but suffered obstacles due to the painful experiences of forced migration, war trauma, discrimination and language barriers, which posed great challenges to their comprehensive integration. and peace in the public education system.

The program succeeded between October 2019 and September 2020 with great success, as the number of beneficiaries reached more than 5 thousand children - including 1467 Syrians and 2749 Turkey - and 406 teachers and 190 caregivers.

5 winners

In addition to the "Trauma Awareness Schools" project, there were 5 other winning projects in the tenth edition of the World Innovation Summit for Education "WISE 2021", including the "Happiness Curriculum" issued by The Government of Delhi, India, where the curriculum developers, Dream a Dream, and other organizations have entered into a partnership in school curricula dedicated to well-being, happiness, self-awareness, and critical thinking.

This work had a positive impact on 800,000 students in 1,024 schools. Their levels of motivation and concentration increased in the classroom. As a result, teachers began to prioritize values ​​over academic success, and the pace of cooperation with fellow teachers increased.

And also the "One Billion" project, which developed an integrated technological platform for education "in the form of a tablet and an application" for all children, with the aim of enhancing numeracy, reading and writing skills in the languages ​​they speak, regardless of the environment that embraces them.

The "Let's All Learn to Read" project, which developed a comprehensive and innovative model for learning to read and write for primary school students, provides teachers with reading materials, training and a grading system with the aim of helping all students "with or without learning difficulties" in Reaching normal reading levels.

More than 703 thousand children and teachers in public schools in Colombia and Panama benefited from the project, in addition to the adoption of the program by the governments of the two countries within their public policies.

The Taaleemabad project - meaning "City of Education" in Urdu - also won, which was chosen for its integration of Pakistani classrooms using digital technologies that provide educational content adapted to the local context and prevailing Pakistani culture, and to the national educational curricula in Pakistan and to teach children both languages. and Urdu, in addition to mathematics and science in various grades of primary schools.

Finally, among the winners was the "Profuture Digital Education" program, developed by Telefónica and La Caixa, and designed to work in vulnerable environments, whether or not they have Internet access.

The program focuses on training and supporting teachers, as it helps them enhance their educational practices and digital skills so that they can provide the best level of education for their students.

The program is spread in 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, knowing that the number of beneficiaries exceeded 914 thousand teachers and 19.7 million children.

The WISE Awards of Appreciation and Encouragement are awarded each year to six innovative projects that have succeeded in facing and addressing global challenges in the field of education. Since 2009, WISE has received more than 4,200 applications for the award from more than 150 countries around the world.