Lora writing. So while Mitch wrote last weekend about many of the things that have been happening close to home, this post is about some of those things that are further afield. But we will start with one close to home lesson.
For eight days at the end of October and beginning of November, I had the gift and opportunity to take part in two trainings. Kim Johnson, an American woman I met at the member care conference in Malaysia in the spring, came to Nepal to lead two trainings at the UMN Kathmandu office. One training was for mental health professionals on Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which is a treatment for conditions involving traumatic memories. And a separate training (for anyone including those who do not have mental health training) in Acute Traumatic Incident Processing (A-TIP). This technique is used as a form of psychological first aid to help someone process a recent trauma.
I coordinated the training with Kim, and UMN was a supportive sponsor to have the training at our offices. I was so grateful to one of our Nepali UMN board members who teaches psychology at the university here for advocating for this. As far as we know, prior to the training there were only 3 or 4 EMDR trained therapists in all of Nepal and now there are 20 more! Additionally, 42 people were trained in the ATIP techniques. This is incredible to me! It feels like the rippling effects of the Kin-dom of God. There will be health and restoration available in a way it has not been before.
Some of you supported this endeavour financially and we were able to make the training (which usually costs more that $1000 USD when done in the US) available for a sliding scale between $35-$200 USD. Mental health clinicians here charge between $3-$15 an hour, and for them the cost of the training without this support would have been utterly inaccessible. It was a wonderful time of learning and connecting and I am excited about the impact that this will have here in Nepal. Also, Kim and I are making plans for her to return -maybe next year! While I am eager to see if it can happen again, though, I am glad to wait a while, because my behind-the-scenes preparation really was a lot of work!!
Pictures below show the EMDR training group; two of the participants with donated EMDR devices (that are not necessary for using EMDR, but make it easier), and the last day with cakes, gifts and traditional scarves of thanks and blessing (Khata).
A group of Presbyterian Church in Canada folks (plus Grandma Jan Siemens) arrived in Kathmandu early Monday morning last week November 17th. I picked them up at the airport and we began a 10-day learning tour (that is not quite finished at the time of this writing) where the group spent time in Kathmandu, visiting UMN project sites, being tourists and we are now at the Tansen Hospital. Pictures and more description will come.
