 PROJECTS
1998-1999
Reducing Transgenerational Transmission of Ethnic Conflict in Georgia
Through a one-year grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace, CSMHI collaborated with and assisted the Foundation for the Development of Human Resources (FDHR) with its programs for IDPs and others suffering from post-traumatic stress. The CSMHI team made three trips to Georgia during the September 1998 - August 1999 grant period.
CSMHI's contributions were on several levels: 1) Helping Georgian psychologists and teachers process their own reactions to the trauma so that they are better able to help others; 2) Developing youth programs that seek to prevent perpetuation of the hatred and violence; 3) Serving as a neutral third party in a collaborative project between Georgian psychologists and teachers from FDHR and South Ossetian counterparts from the Tskhinvali Youth Palace; 4) Gathering information on the experience and adjustment of IDPs, and training our Georgian partners at FDHR in the process.
For the latter, the CSMHI team conducted a series of intensive interviews with one particular Georgian IDP family who fled their home in Abkhazia and have been living in a refugee compound outside Tbilisi since the early 1990s. On each visit to Georgia, the team spent several hours with the family, as individuals and together, learning about their experience, listening to how they were internalizing and adapting to their new life, and helping them interpret their difficulties. The method of interviewing drew upon psychoanalytic techniques for illuminating the interplay between a person's internal and external worlds. The sessions served as ongoing training for members of FDHR who accompanied the CSMHI team on these visits. In the course of the relationship between CSMHI and the IDP family, one can see marked improvement in the family's health and outlook. While it would be impossible to have the same level of contact with the vast numbers of IDPs living in Georgia, we can also see how this family now serves as a model of survival for many of the 3,000 other IDPs living near them. The effect of this intervention will thus have a broader impact. For an account of this family, please go to One IDP family's story.
November 1998 Trip
A two-person team from CSMHI (Volkan and Urbanovich) traveled to Georgia to build on the findings from the May 1998 assessment trip. During this trip they were briefed extensively by FDHR members on their various programs and tentatively identified areas of collaboration. As in May 1998, the team visited Tbilisi Sea, a refugee complex outside Tbilisi, and traveled with FDHR to Tskhinvali to meet with South Ossetian counterparts there. While at Tbilisi Sea, the team met for a second time with members of the Balanchivadze family whom they had met the previous May. The team conducted a series of workshops with FDHR members, including a joint meeting with the South Ossetians.
March 1999 Trip
A four-person team from CSMHI (Volkan, Urbanovich, Thomson, Saathoff) traveled to Tbilisi where they held workshops with FDHR and visited Tbilisi Sea, where they interviewed the Balanchivadze family. When they traveled to Tskhinvali (South Ossetia), they held joint sessions with FDHR and South Ossetian government officials to inform them of these activities and to seek their support and cooperation. Back in Tbilisi, CSMHI met with the Georgian Minister of Public Health, with a representative of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, and with the director of the UNHCR mobile team in Georgia. The team also gave a lecture on trauma, prejudice, and children at Tbilisi State University.
August 1999 Trip
Drs. Volkan, Urbanovich, and Thomson made presentations at a conference in Tbilisi organized by FDHR entitled Society and Psychological Support and later presented a day of seminars on psychological topics to the FDHR group alone. CSMHI held several meetings with the FDHR group and interviewed the Balanchivadze family at Tbilisi Sea. During this trip a crucial juncture in the Georgia-South Ossetian collaboration was also reached. Instead of traveling with the Georgians to meet in Tskhinvali (South Ossetia), CSMHI invited members of the South Ossetian group to come to Tbilisi. With permission from South Ossetian officials, a group of South Ossetian teachers traveled to Tbilisi for the first time, to meet with FDHR and CSMHI.
Projects
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