IOM Egypt Holds Training on ‘Psychological First Aid, Mindfulness'

IOM Egypt, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State, conducted a series of three-day training-of-trainers courses on ‘Psychological First Aid and Mindfulness’ for 20 front-line responders from INGOs, IOM as well as the Egyptian Red Crescent.

During the training, partakers were introduced to key essentials relevant to conducting psychological first aid for vulnerable and distressed migrants during and after crises. They were also trained on the state of mindfulness and associated techniques of resilience and how to protect themselves and their colleagues from the stressful and emotional events they encounter, according to IOM.

In the same connection, IOM revealed that more courses and workshops are planned to target more front-line responders to enhance and build the national capacities, in addition, IOM expert trainer, Mr. K. Rasool will participate in the first training that will be conducted by the recently trained inpiduals to provide them with feedback and supervise them as they carry out the PFA training for their colleagues.

Also in this regard, IOM hailed the US State Department, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) for their generous funding that allowed them to aid more people in a bid to combat the trafficking in persons problem.

In May, IOM Egypt in collaboration with the Egyptian Red Crescent organized an awareness-raising symposium on the awful virus for more than 90 migrants from Yemen, Sudan, and Syria residing in Alexandria.

Within the framework of the COVID-19 response, IOM conducted the seminar to help many of them acquire critical knowledge about the deadly virus and learn the mechanism of combating this global crisis as well, according to a statement released by IOM Egypt.

The project is funded by the European Union, under the “Regional Response to COVID-19 in North African Countries” program, the statement noted.