1.8 Working with Trauma

07/29/19 • 55 min

Dr. Patricia Omidian is a medical anthropologist and international development consultant. She is also the co-founder of Focusing Initiatives International, an international NGO that supports the development of community wellness programs and trains trainers and local practitioners in public health approached to wellness and trauma healing. She has many years of international experience primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan working with different organizations including Save the Children, WHO, IRC and more on research and evaluation, community health, social reintegration, peace building, psychosocial wellness and education. She speaks with us about addressing the layers of intergenerational war time and refugee experience related trauma, cultural modalities of healing, the concept of safety, and much more. She joins us from Oregon, USA.

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1.7 Urgency, Security and Humanitarian Assistance

Paul Barker began his career as a peace corps volunteer in Iran before beginning to work with a variety of organizations primarily in humanitarian contexts in Sudan, Ethiopia, West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan and more. Over the years he has worked on addressing the underlying causes of social issues in vulnerable areas through policy analysis, advocacy and improved program design. He has held numerous Country Director positions with CARE and Save the Children where he led programs that addressed important social issues such as emergency feeding, maternal and child health, rural credit and micro finance programs, water and sanitation, peace building, child rights governance and child protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation and more. He speaks to us about the joy of working in rural communities, working with governments, internal tracking and accounting systems, the role of the media, a sense of urgency, the role of the military, and much more. He joins us from Portland, USA.

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1.9 Peaks and Valleys of Aid & Development

Gary Burniske is currently the Managing Director of the Center for Global Food Security within Discovery Park at Purdue University. He is responsible for the day to day management of the Center and networks with Purdue’s faculty and scientists to take a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling global challenges affecting food security. Before joining Purdue, Gary served as Country Director for Mercy Corps in Colombia and Tajikistan, and Country Director for the Institute for Sustainable Communities in Russia. He also worked as Regional Technical Advisor in Agriculture and Natural Resources with CARE covering 25 countries in Asia and Latin America. He speaks to us about the transition from emergency to development work, food for work programs, politicization of funding and the role of donors, behaviour change, working as a country director, clustering of programs, plan for phasing out vs continuous problems at different time periods, the role of the military in aid, the complexities of drug policies, working in academia and much more. He joins us from Lafayette, USA.