Updated April 2014.
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Acknowledgements
UN-INMA is a mutual-help
and self-help group emerging in the early 1970s in Far North Queensland, Australia.
One foci commencing in the late 1980s was supporting inter-digenous and
inter-cultural dialogues on relational mediating. This focus in part emerged
from a Relational Mediating gathering energised by a sister mutual-help group,
Mediation Matters in Dec 1993. It happened on the shores of Lake Tinaroo in the
Atherton Tablelands with attendees being largely indigenous women from the
Australia Top-End. These dialogues and experience-exchange led to UN-INMA evolving small rapid response psychosocial support
teams in the early 1990s that has evolved into RAD.
One of UN-INMA’s foci and
fields of action is what is termed Intercultural Normative Model Areas (INMAs)
being evolved by Unique Nurturers – hence Unique
Nurturers - Intercultural Normative Model Areas (UN-Inma).
In the forming and evolving
of RAD, the UN-INMA Fertile Futures Program is acknowledging and drawing upon
the experience and practice of many grassroots people engaged in psychosocial
support in emergency contexts in the Oceania East Asia Region. The Program acknowledges people from the East Asia Pacific
Psychnet Network's Secretariat in the Philippines, and people from local and
grassroots organizations and networks through eleven countries in the Region
who have so freely shared their supporting ways.
The Fertile
Futures Program, as the name implies, links rapid response into longer term
reconstituting of folk, communities and societies following man-made and
natural disasters. A number of Laceweb mutual-help and self-help energies with
varying foci collaborated in energising aspects of the Program. Refer Laceweb Functional Matrices.
RADs links to Psychnet
In August 2001, UNICEF South East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office
(SEAPRO) auspiced UK funding for a move to enhance the capacities of various
grassroots community-based organizations and networks in the South East Asia
Pacific Region (the Region) to effectively provide psychosocial care in times
of emergencies. An essential element of this effort is the forging of new
alliances and the revitalization of existing links among various resonant
organizations, networks and people working in the area of psychosocial response
in the Region. UN-INMA folk supported this action in finding natural nurturers,
linking them together, evolving a literature data base, gathering healing
resources from the field (photos, videos, papers, etc.), preparing experiential
learning modules, and engaging with others in the pre-test of the modules
including field testing in a war zone.
It has been recognised that
people of the Region, often with no formal academic or professional training in
the psychosocial area are providing valuable and palpable support to others in
times of emergency. For these people, caring and nurturing is a natural aspect
of their everyday life. These people are termed ‘natural nurturers’. The
presence of natural nurturers in their countries was affirmed by all of the 49
healer attendees at the Pre-test Gathering from eleven countries. Additionally,
it is recognised that people in the Region have psychosocial resources that
they draw upon in times of emergencies. There is a shared wisdom, often born of
adversity that supports their integrity in the hard times; many have
considerable resilience, and so there has been a move to better know this
experience and explore ways to tap into it and use it in supporting others
following emergencies.
An underlying assumption is that
a strong and proactive network of people and mutual-help organizations in the
Region may well be able to support in various ways the delivery of rapid
psychosocial assessment and care in times of emergencies towards evolving
sustainable psychosocial wellbeing outcomes.
Another assumption is that
natural nurturers drawn from the local villages may be supported to perform
rapid assessment of psychosocial need, capacity and resilience during/following
an emergency and be able to quickly inform aid agencies so they may be better
able to assist in ways that embraces and works alongside local nurturing
experience and capacity.
One of the landmarks in this
effort was the holding of the First SE Asia and Pacific Regional Experts'
Meeting on Psychosocial Response in Emergencies' on August 30/31, 2001 in
Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting was attended by healers from the different
areas/groups in the region and resulted in the establishment of the Regional
Emergency Psychosocial Support Network with its Secretariat at University of
the Philippines, Centre for Integrative and Development Studies-Psychosocial
Trauma and Human Rights Program (UPCIDS-PST). A UN-Inma healer linked to RAD attended
that Bangkok meeting
Evolving the Psychnet Network
The Psychnet Secretariat arranged visits to find and link with people, organizations and community
wellbeing networks engaged in psychosocial response in five SE Asia countries
during 2003 to 2004 engaging with people and learning about the processes they
use and engaging in action research as well as seeing videos and photos of the
people in action. As well, there has been sharing of information with those
linked with relating to what others in the Region are doing.
Another seminal gathering strengthening Psychnet was the Tagaytay
Gathering in the Philippines in August 2005 attended by 49 people from eleven
countries in the Region who provided input on the training resources evolved
through the Secretariat. A small team then tested these resources in carrying
out assessment in a post emergency context demonstrating their practical use. A
few UN-INMA folk attended that pre-test gathering
Evolving Psychosocial Support Quick
Response Capacity
An important aspect of the forming
Psychnet was identifying Natural Nurturers in the Region who could be part of a
quick response psychosocial support pool that could be called upon to be
deployed quickly at short notice in small teams for rapid assessment of
psychosocial aspects of emergencies.
While RAD Emergency Psychosocial Support
Network is evolving its own cultural forms, it has all the experience of
Psychnet available to it.