By Danjuma Attah, Gombe
The Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Funds (ATJLF) has funded the training of 75 lay counsellors on healing traumatized persons in Gombe State.
Mr John Benedict, the programme officer of ATJLF project in the State stressed during the Gombe LGA training that there is great need for more efforts in healing traumatized people living in Gombe State .
Kishimi Shelter and Care Foundation and Psycare Health Rights Foundation are implementing the project funded by ATJLF which is aimed at providing palliative care for traumatized victims of violence and conflict in Northeast Nigeria.
According to Mr. Benedict, trauma healing in Gombe has become necessary because people who escaped conflict and violence from insurgency ravaged Northeast States find solace in Gombe State.
He said, “Gombe is a place where most Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s) from conflict areas in the Northeast normally come to find solace. By our estimation, there are more IDP’s in Gombe State than any other part of the Northeast”.
He explained that the intension for training the lay counsellors was to touch the grassroots so that when the counsellors come face to face with traumatized people, they will be able to have the skills to counsel them and also make referrals when necessary.
He said, “I believe the Government through their agencies have been able to do their bits, CSO’s too have to come in, religious leaders, community leaders, every hand must be on deck to be able to reach the objective of this project.
“I encourage everybody to participate in the healing process of everyone that has been traumatised either by conflict or any other form of violence”, he stressed.
Some of the Gombe participants who shared their experience on the training to our Correspondent expressed gratitude and said they have been equipped and feel encouraged to offer support to traumatized victims in their communities.
Mr Anthony Haruna from Bethany Organisation said “the training has equipped me a lot to be able to go and interact with people that need social help and support especially people that are traumatized”.
For Mr Gowon Paul, “I’ve learned from the training that you can actually extend assistance, volunteer help to our communities through lay counselling instead of overlooking the traumatized persons”.
The lay counsellors were trained by a specialist on how to identify traumatized persons within the community as well as give them counselling among other skills.
This is the second time the training is taking place in Gombe LGA in the last one month. The training was also done in Billiri and Yamaltu-Deba LGA’s with 25 participants from each of the three centre
