The heart of the OperationSAFE program is a little penguin named Pete. We designed the characters and the story so that it can be used anywhere in the world with children who have suffered emotional trauma. Set in Antarctica, Pete is a playful little guy who needs some friends to play with. When his parents both are too busy to play with him Pete stomps off mad and ends up on the wrong side of the ice-shelf that falls off into the ocean. Over the course of five days children in OperationSAFE camps learn with Pete five important lessons for trauma recovery.
With the children we use large picture boards and local storytellers who speak their language to engage the children’s attention. This video from Day 1 shows the artwork from illustrator Graham Fleming and cartoonist Yayoi Inoue with narration from the author, Jonathan Wilson.
From March we will be taking OperationSAFE to Haiti where children will meet Pete and hear his story in their language. Through crafts, games, songs and Pete’s story the children will learn how to smile again and begin their journey to hope and healing.
We are also continuing to work on an animated version of “Pete’s Adventure” that can be dubbed into languages for use around the world. Stay tuned for more reports on our progress.
UPDATE! You can sponsor our volunteer OperationSAFE trainers for $6 an hour. We need sponsors for 1000 hours. Please sponsor today!
Beginning in March, OperationSAFE will start bringing smiles back to the children of Haiti who have suffered so much in the recent earthquake. Children who have experienced trauma need more than just food, shelter and medicine – they need hugs, hope and help.
According to a recently released study of children affected by Hurricane Katrina published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the estimated prevalence of serious emotional disturbances (SED) among residents of the affected areas was 14.9 percent. Of those, 9.3 percent of youths were believed to have SED that was directly attributable to Hurricane Katrina. Characteristics of SED include inappropriate behavior, depression, hyperactivity, eating disorders, fears and phobias, and learning difficulties for children younger than 18.
We are partnering with Haitian Artisans for Peace International (HAPI), a community development non-profit organization that has long-term work in the mountain village of Mizak near Jacmel. This video was made by one of their volunteers before the quake, of the village and the work they are doing in helping impoverished families start economically viable small businesses.
Since the disaster much of their focus has been on immediate needs and they are bringing in relief, medical and construction teams to help the community rebuild. OperationSAFE will train and supply teams that will work alongside the medical component with the children, with the goal of rapidly passing on the ongoing trauma work to Haitian locals.
Teamwork
Already we have become a team of international proportions with Japanese, Chinese, American, Canadian, French and Haitians helping. Materials are being translated into French/Creole, and posters, storyboards and character medallions are being produced to help children remember the important lessons they will learn. Games, songs and crafts all need to be localized and leaders need to be trained. We are bringing in our best trainers from China, where they have been using the material for two years with children who suffered trauma in the Great Sichuan Earthquake.
Although we will not be able to accept volunteers at this time to go to Haiti, we still need your help on this team as well. We have a very short time to prepare everything needed for the camp beforehand – nothing will be available locally in Haiti. We also have little time to raise money before we start training in late February.
Your generous donation today will help us bring Haitian children their smiles back,
You can spread this appeal by hitting the Retweet button or the Facebook Share button.
You can add your comment to this post to send your encouragement to the children in Haiti.
You can partner with OperationSAFE — donate your passion and creativity!
With your help Haitian children will know “I am not alone”
Thank you,
It is now almost three weeks since the devastating quake in Haiti. Much has been accomplished, but great challenges still remain. In the response to every disaster some needs are constant but others change as time goes by. Please use this guide to continue to pray specifically. (A good way to remember to pray is to bookmark it and put it in with the sites that you check daily).
1. Pray that relief would come swiftly to those who need it,
The logistics of relief are mind-boggling. Desperate people trying to get food can create an even more dangerous situation for themselves and relief workers. Pray for creative solutions, organization, grass-roots distribution that works, and that all for those with special needs to get relief as well.
2. Pray for the safety and morale of relief workers,
Relief work in such a tragic situation as Haiti is morally draining. Every child that you cannot help far outweighs all of those that you did help in your mind as you go to sleep exhausted and know that it probably won’t be much better tomorrow. These workers need encouragement, support and angels of mercy.
3. Pray for families who are facing an uncertain future,
After the initial shock of the quake there is a brief time when everyone is simply grateful to be alive, and have little time to think about anything but survival. In the coming weeks, people will do more waiting than anything else – and while they wait the future will look very bleak indeed. Pray for hope, for clear information from authorities, for solutions that provide not just for present needs but for future possibilities as well.
4. Pray for children
Children continue to be the most vulnerable after disaster and new threats are starting to emerge. Pray that children could be reunited with families, that orphans would be cared for and not end up trafficked or on the street. Pray for emotional care for children who have experienced trauma.
5. Pray for the Haitian government and for international authorities.
Haiti was the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere before the quake and many of the problems they are facing pre-existed the current crisis. Pray that wisdom and compassion would prevail and corruption and greed would be overcome.
6. Pray for international aid agencies.
There are as many as 500 international groups responding to the disaster in Haiti and a great outpouring of aid and support has been generously given. Pray for these agencies to cooperate well, to be generous with each other, to use these funds wisely and compassionately to make a lasting difference for the people of Haiti.
7. Pray for ongoing compassion
Pray for all those who have given of time or treasure to not grow weary in doing good. Pray for all those who are working in the field volunteering that they would overcome “Compassion Fatigue”. Pray that we would not forget Haiti or be distracted by the next thing in the news.
8. Pray for yourself!
A true heart of compassion is not just ready to give when the need arises like it has now in Haiti. A true heart of compassion seeks out ways to help even when no one else notices that there is suffering. People have been suffering in Haiti for a long time, but now the attention of the world is upon it because of the disaster. A true heart of compassion will allow itself to continue caring long after the world has lost interest.
Once you finish praying, ask yourself two questions.
How can I become personally involved with helping the people in Haiti?
How can I financially support someone who is personally involved?
Last month I shared some thoughts about how people use Twitter according to their personality types and used the Wizard of Oz as an example of three basic types -
The Scarecrows, who are information-centric and primarily use Twitter to discover what is happening, get the latest news, and to share knowledge,
The Tin-Men (and women!), who are relationship-focussed and use Twitter primarily to connect with interesting people and make friends, and
The Lions, who are results-oriented, who use Twitter mostly to make a difference and meet objectives.
Some of the best users of Twitter obviously have a great grasp of all three, but I have a suspicion that most of us are heavily weighted in one or two but find the third to be a chore. We would rather use the limited time that we have on twitter to concentrate on what we enjoy rather than having it become another job to do.
As I have been working on a social media strategy for OperationSAFE and our work with trauma children I have come to the conclusion that the potential is truly amazing, but the amount of work involved is also just as amazing. If we are really going to make a difference we need your help. And I have seen just how helpful that can be. We are preparing to partner with a community in the remote mountains of Haiti to provide trauma care for about 300 children. In just a few short hours on Twitter we were able to find a number of helpful volunteers who translated all of our materials into French over the next couple of days. But this was not just the work of a few translators, everyone helped by RT’ing the appeal, by spreading it to French speaking tweeters and making personal introductions. The point being that everyone helped in their own way!
Over the next few months I would like us to get organized and start using our personal strengths to make a massive difference for trauma children all over the world. I have some very specific objectives that I will be sharing (the Lion in me!) but of course we can all start with Haiti and the desperate need there for trauma care for children who have been through not just the earthquake but the aftermath as well.
Here is how!
Scarecrows! Want to help trauma children? Help me research, find news items, and educate to raise awareness. Find articles for me, blog posts, tweets from people in the field. The main causes of traumatic stress for children in the world today are war, abuse, trafficking, disasters, extreme poverty and displacement (refugees) – find current and compelling information and let’s make it known to the world.
Tin-Men! Want to help trauma children? Introduce caring people to our work at OperationSAFE. Find the people who care and help them to be part of the solution. We need to meet the people who are working with children who have been abused, who are on the ground in places around the world where children need our help. We need to make partnerships with charities and ngos who need our help to meet the needs of these children. You are the link between us and them. We want to make this as personal as we can, so that each of you can make a real difference.
Lions!Use your passion for trauma children to help us raise awareness of the problem and recruit others to join our cause! Start grassroots campaigns, organize teams, find new ways for us to get the message out. See something that we aren’t doing yet – jump in and help us! And of course RT, RT, RT!
So which one are you? Please comment below and join the team – could you commit to spending an hour a week doing what you love to do already for truama children?
The term “Compassion Fatigue” has been used to describe the reluctance of donors to keep giving after the initial wave of appeals connected with large disasters such as the 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Hurricane season, 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake and Myanmar Cyclone, or this month’s Haitian quake. Charities realize that the window of opportunity to solicit funds is typically only open for three to six weeks and so the pressure to bring even greater exposure and more insistent appeals is even stronger. However, the underlying cause of “Compassion Fatigue” is not just cynicism or stinginess on the part of donors but something more serious that those who work hands-on in humanitarian causes are more familiar with; Secondary Traumatic Stress.
Traumatic Stress is brought on when we experience events that are highly abnormal. Our organization, OperationSAFE is dedicated to helping children who have gone through trauma such as disasters, abuse, trafficking, and extreme poverty. These children have a difficult time functioning in normal life after what they have been through. Typically, they “handle” this inordinate stress by trying to block it out or withdrawing within themselves. Hopelessness and despair are common. However, traumatic stress is not limited to the children alone, but also to those who care for them, whether it is the family or humanitarian workers. As these caregivers hear their stories and witness their suffering, the very same responses naturally occur – a strong desire to withdraw and the loss of hope that anything will actually make a difference.
When we train volunteers and teach parents how to deal with trauma in children we also give them suggestions on how to keep themselves from developing Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome, in some degree the same suggestions are helpful for all of us as we struggle to keep a heart of compassion in the midst of unrelenting bad news from Haiti.
9 Steps to Avoid Compassion Fatigue Without Failing to Care
The Best Way to Care for Others is to Care for Yourself!
In the field we know that lives are depending on us so it is vital that we take care of ourselves so that we can care for them,
Eat, Sleep and Relax as you normally would,
Make sure to Exercise Physically to help relieve stress,
Avoid the use of Chemicals to either enhance performance or induce rest.
Share the Care!
If there is only a one-way flow of stress coming in, it rapidly becomes too much to bear. One way to reduce the strain is to share it in part with others,
Talk about the things that are heavy on your heart with friends and supporters,
Journal, write a blog, send an e-mail to a friend, tweet,
Pray, meditate, or have a small group discussion with others who care.
Look for Signs of Hope!
Unfortunately, bad news is news. Good news doesn’t often make the front page unless it is dramatic. However, there are less dramatic stories of hope that surround us every day. Be on the look-out for the signs of life returning to normal.
Make a point of writing or sharing one good thing that happened each day,
Look for lessons that can be learned even in the midst of the worst situations,
Celebrate even the smallest victories and personal accomplishments.
I believe that one great contributor to compassion fatigue in the public is that the media overexposes the need and underexposes the great response and difference that is made in people’s lives. This is the nature of the media of course and it is much easier to report the thousands dead than to find each story of individual lives that recover. Another contributor to compassion fatigue is the vast scale of donations that are given to charities and the lack of communication of the results. Donors are given a full disclosure of the pain and suffering but are deprived of the hope and results needed to relieve the trauma they have been exposed to.
My recommendation for those who seek to be compassionate without fail is to become personally involved with a smaller charity – volunteer for hands-on work, give time to be on their board, lend them some of your passion and creativity and share in the the reward of seeing lives changed for good.
(Update! Click Here to read “8 More Ways to Keep Praying for Haiti”)
There is an old adage that goes like this, “Well, I guess all that we can do is pray…” I approach prayer quite a bit differently and perhaps so should you. Prayer always comes first – before we can even attempt to do our “little bit” we should make sure that we have called in the “big guns”. Here is my prayer list for the recent earthquake in Haiti. If it is helpful in organizing your thoughts feel free to join in and pray with me.
1. Pray for those in need of rescue that it will come swiftly.
There are many who are in need of miracles. That teams would arrive an hour sooner, that dogs would catch a faint scent amidst the stench of death, that the right piece of concrete would be moved. For all the training and effort that the courageous rescue teams put in, at this point they need miracles more than anything else.
2. Pray for the rescuers – safety, rest, encouragement, in the midst of horror and unrelenting pain.
The job that the rescue teams face is completely overwhelming and they will fail many more times than they will succeed. Rescue teams suffer great personal trauma and often become suicidal months after an event. Pray for these courageous men and women now and after they return.
3. Pray for families that have witnessed the unthinkable, are worried about loved ones, and fearful for their own safety.
For every person who is missing, dead or severely injured in the quake there are ten more who care about them and find themselves unable to do anything about it. Pray that emotional needs would receive attention amidst all of the physical needs.
4. Pray for children who need comfort and safety, hugs and reassurance – even if they are physically “fine.”
Children are the most vulnerable amidst the aftermath of a disaster. Every child whose world has been disrupted, seen the death of another person or lost friends or family is in need of emotional care, even if they have not suffered physical harm themselves.
5. Pray for governments and authorities that all red tape would dissappear and corruption would cease.
Haiti has been the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere for a long time and there are many problems that were there before the earthquake. While the attention of the world is on Haiti, it is time for governments and authorities within Haiti to act for the good of the people and not to promote their political agenda or to line their own pockets.
6. Pray for relief agencies to have wisdom and compassion to make a lasting difference in Haiti.
The earthquake is a great opportunity for aid agencies working in Haiti to make forward progress in a nation where things have only steadily gotten worse. But long lasting change will come through courageous and wise decisions that deal with the source of problems.
7. Pray for those around you that they would respond not just with what they can do, but with their heart.
The temptation that we all have is to give a small donation and call it the best that we can do. We all have many reasons why we cannot give more. Pray that hearts would be moved and that people would be truly generous. For those of us using social media like Facebook or Twitter, this means that we should get involved, make connections and let it be personal.
8. Pray for yourself that you would have a heart of compassion – start now and it will grow.
A true heart of compassion is not just ready to give when the need arises like it has now in Haiti. A true heart of compassion seeks out ways to help even when no one else notices that there is suffering. People have been suffering in Haiti for a long time, but now the attention of the world is upon it because of the disaster. A true heart of compassion will allow itself to continue caring long after the world has lost interest.
Once you finish praying, ask yourself two questions.
How can I become personally involved with helping the people in Haiti?
How can I financially support someone who is personally involved?
It is important in the early stages of a disaster to fill up the coffers of those organizations that do rescue and relief work. They will use that money to stay ready for the next disaster that comes. But in the age of Twitter and Facebook, find someone who is giving their time, energy and life to help those who are suffering and give generously or become that person and give your heart to those who need it most.
The other day my children were riding their bicycles home from school when my daughter fell and skinned her knee. Her big brother helped her home and then we washed the wound and applied band-aids. I say band-aids because unlike a cut, a scrape covers a wider area and one band-aid just wasn’t enough. A few hugs and kisses later and the tears were gone and her life got back to normal (as did her brother’s attitude.)
Humanitarian work is much like this skinned knee but on a much vaster scale. Typically, after a crisis, various governmental, military and ngo groups rush to the area to provide humanitarian relief. These groups are charged with saving as many lives as possible with the funds with which they are entrusted, and so they concentrate those resources at the places where the maximum good can be done. Field hospitals are set up, feeding programs are put in place, vast camps are built to provide shelter, and many people are helped. All of this is good, but it is not the entire picture.
Each of these is what I call the “Big Band-Aid”, a strategic placement of resources so that the maximum number of people can be helped. This usually succeeds in meeting the vast majority of needs, however it is in the minority needs that this model breaks down. In every crisis there are people who for various reasons are not covered by the “Big Band-Aid”. Some are geographically remote, living in villages high in the mountains and cannot reach the city. Others are physically present but face different obstacles such as race, religion, disability or poverty that prevent them from receiving the help that they need.
The problem is that for each of these different groups’ needs to be met it would require as many resources or more than it took to meet the needs of the majority. Like my daughter’s skinned knee it would take three “Big Band-Aids” to entirely cover the area at three times the cost, even though numerically only a fraction of the population are being served.
This is where volunteers matter most. A relatively small number of volunteers can be deployed to multiple areas at a much lower cost and can even be more effective than a large-scale program that costs millions of dollars. Because volunteers bring passion and creativity to their work, they are able to both recognize the special needs of minority groups and adapt creative solutions to meet those needs.
I remember working with a small team of volunteers to help an elderly man clean his home after a large earthquake in the countryside in Japan. We arrived after the inspectors had placed a yellow card on his home (meaning that it would require extensive repairs) and found him in a state of despair. His wife had been in the hospital and was scheduled to return home, but of course now would not be returning any time soon. As we cleaned his home, he held his head in his hands and lamented that he would never be able to repair his home before he died. One of the most discouraging things for him turned out to be that his television wasn’t working. Without his wife, the television was his only friend and of course without the news he was fearful and alone. In a few minutes of tinkering, we discovered the problem with the antenna and had the set fixed and what a difference it made! The elderly man was all smiles and couldn’t thank us enough.
Scenes like this happen all the time when volunteers give of their time and effort to help those who are hurting. It does not have to cost a lot of money and even the smallest things can make a huge difference in the lives of those who are helped.
Children who have been through trauma need more than just food, shelter and medicine. They need hope, hugs and help. Please take a few minutes to watch our newest informational trailer about our work with trauma children and the exciting new animated film, “Pete’s Adventure”.
If you are as excited about the potential of this project to help children as we are, know that there are plenty of ways that you can help.
Hit the RT button or the Share button and help spread the word!
Become a fan of OperationSAFE on Facebook, or a follower on Twitter
Make a donation ~ we are non-profit and your investment not only helps children but is also a huge encouragement for our team of passionate and creative people.
Comment ~ donate your passion and creativity as well ~ we would love to hear your ideas!
Over the last month I started taking an interest in the new List feature of Twitter, and wondering if it could be used to provide leverage for non-profits and charities. I noticed that despite being new to Twitter and at the time having fewer than 2000 followers, @OperationSAFE was on a relatively high number of TwitterLists (about 1 list for every 10 followers). I believe that this was true because those people who follow and then interact tend to care deeply about the work that we do with trauma children, perhaps resulting in higher interaction per follower. I decided to try two experiments to see if the list could be made to work to strengthen the experience more than just recruiting bulk followers.
Experiment #1 The OpSAFE Twitter Team
I started asking people to help our cause by joining the OpSAFE Twitter Team through an act.ly retweet campaign. Act.ly had just expanded their service from petitions to RT’s and designed it to help people to promote causes. I decided to tweet the link and ask people on the act.ly page to retweet it again to join the team. The second step of retweeting to make a commitment to favorite and retweet @operationSAFE tweets got them recognition on the act.ly page and added to the opsafe-twitter-team TwitterList.
Experiment #2 The Make a #Charity TwitterList for Christmas Campaign
When I noticed that we were on about 1 list per 10 followers, I was curious to know how that compared with others on Twitter. I checked on Listorious’ ranking of the top #140 most listed and discovered that they listed much further than the top 140 and found myself down where I thought I would be, way down the list! But what surprised me was that many in the top 140 actually were on fewer lists than I was! How could that be? It turns out that Listorious only counts those lists that are registered with them, “to check for quality”. After registering all of the lists that I was already on, I was much further up the ranking than I thought possible and decided to encourage a campaign for Christmas to make as many charity Twitter Lists as possible. My thinking was that it could give every charity listed a little boost in awareness and might actually rank @OperationSAFE in the top #140 most listed.
Things worked out much better than I had imagined. In the space of a little less than a month,
The highest I was ranked on the top #140 Most Listed was ….. drumroll please…. #12! Actually ranked above Alyssa but nowhere close to Pete Cashmore who is still hundreds of lists ahead.
I was able to count at least 154 charity lists that were created, although I was only able to track the ones that included @operationSAFE on them.
So what does this really mean and what good will come out of it? Not quite sure yet, but here are a few observations.
1. Rankings and Statistics Can Be Easily Gamed – But Can Also Help Motivate!
Most of the people on the #140 Most Listed ranking have 10 to 100 times the followers that we have and are also listed much more than we are on the actual Twitter site. Simply by registering all of the #charity lists that were made we gamed the system. I think the much more valuable statistics are the follower rankings for charity lists, as these are based off the same data as on Twitter itself and also show that while many of the whales may be listed umpteen thousand times, most of those lists are themselves never seen except by their own creators. The value of lists has yet to be seen, but one of the value of rankings is motivational – they help make campaigns fun by giving people a goal for which to aim.
2. Lists Can Help Make Stronger Connections and Interactions
While I am sure that I will fall back down the ranking of the 140 Most Listed, the OpSAFE-Twitter-Team list will probably become the core of our social media strategy. I found that this list became my starting place on Twitter, the people that I interact first with, retweet and who of course were committed to retweet our message as well. I now tweet regularly on how to make a strong team and recommend that everyone on the team help those who are just starting out.
Everything is still so new on Twitter that I am not sure what to make of it all. But I do believe that the platform has real potential for non-profits and charities. Lists are a great way to start making sense of the stream and connecting more deeply with those who are passionate about the causes that we support.
Lets face it! Most people are only generous when they have to be – and we are fast approaching the most generous of seasons, Christmas – when expectations that you will give are at their highest. In fact, if you forget to give a present to say your girlfriend or your husband, you can expect to be in the doghouse for quite a while. The present doesn’t actually gain you anything – it just keeps you from getting into trouble!
Some people have learned the age old adage that it is better to give than to receive and eagerly give when the opportunity presents itself. They have discovered that it is the gift that is given when least expected that has the highest returns. They have learned that helping someone in need, can even be its own reward in itself. Having an open heart to give is truly the first step to becoming a generous person. But it is just the first step. Here are three more steps that will have you off to a running start at true generosity!
1. ”Generosity is not limited by wealth or income, only by passion and creativity.”
Truly generous people are never limited by a lack of money or even opportunity! They see the need and are passionate to help, even to the point of devising creative solutions to get around any obstacles. Most of the organizations and charities that are really making a difference in the world today were not started by the wealthy or the powerful, but the passionate and creative.
2. “Generosity and creativity are entwined, it is possible to give without being creative, but not to be generous.”
True generosity goes beyond writing a check – it is making an investment in something that you wish to succeed. Whether that investment is in a young relative’s education or a child suffering on the far side of the world, it is just as important to follow-through to ensure that your gift has been well-spent, to encourage persistence and offer counsel. Much aid given is actually counter-productive, creating dependencies and ensuring that those receiving it will never succeed on their own. True generosity looks past numbers and creates solutions.
3. “Donate your passion and creativity and you can do far more than those with only money to give.”
Truly generous people want to do more than just give money. They want to be involved and part of the solution for the causes that they care about. Social media is a perfect catalyst for these truly generous people to be more involved on a world-wide level than they have ever been able to before. A shut-in living on a pension can be just as passionate and creative as a fresh-faced student (but perhaps with a bit more wisdom and experience). A starving student can make just as big an impact as a celebrity if they are willing to give their all.
I won’t kid you, becoming a truly generous person – also requires sacrifice, a deep love for mankind, and humility – all of these are character traits that must be learned with great diligence – but you can take the first step today.
Lets face it! Most people are only generous when they have to be – and we are fast approaching the most generous of seasons, Christmas – when expectations that you will give are at their highest. In fact, if you forget to give a present to say your girlfriend or your husband, you can expect to be in the doghouse for quite a while. The present doesn’t actually gain you anything – it just keeps you from getting into trouble!
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