|
Youth Counseling Program
In Palestine, adolescents aged 15 to 20 are especially vulnerable to
suffer from the widespread violence because they are most exposed to it.
In 2001 and 2002, CCRR provided group counseling to young people of this
age, teaching them to deal with the violence and its psychological,
mental and physical effects.
In Palestine, violence is quite often dressed in a political suit and
mixed with religious or national ideas that put additional pressure on
adolescents. The number of youth who have been exposed to this kind of
violence has grown rapidly throughout the Intifada. The CCRR program
sought to empower the participating adolescents through a mixture of
counseling and learning sessions, so that they would be able to make
free decisions that are not forced upon them.
The acquisition of conflict resolution skills is essential since they
help to revaluate the situation and analyze one's own feelings towards
it. Often participants brought new friends to participate in the work
shops. Although the participants showed much interest in and enthusiasm
about the courses, many of the participants in fact were traumatized
and in need of a different treatment. Although the training was not able
to fulfill the specific needs in question, the program succeeded in
identifying the cases where further treatment was necessary and to
organize help from a third party.
|
