Almost 20,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees live in Tsore Camp in Ethiopia. Nearly half of them are children who left their home country in search of a better life fleeing from conflict and death threats.
Now, the JOFA project is teaming up with these children to help them recover from traumatic experiences.
Despite the facilities aimed to provide education, care, and friendly spaces to children established by different organizations, children living in the camp are highly vulnerable and their emotional state needs urgent intervention.
The Needs Assessment Report conducted by JOFA in 2021, identified a high prevalence of disturbed emotions, silence, negligence, and difficulty communicating with others among most children.
Stress and traumatic experiences during children’s journey fleeing from their home country to the refugee camp showed up during JOFA’s intervention. These problems were not just affecting children’s active school participation but also their relationship with others and their own happiness.
TeamUp
TeamUp is a psychosocial support intervention developed by War Child Holland, Save the Children Netherlands, and UNICEF Netherlands to meet the urgent psychosocial needs of refugee children.
The concept of TeamUp is in psychosocial group intervention that encourages learning through doing, playing, and moving together. TeamUp uses group games, sports-based activities, dance, and creative routines such as singing and breathing practices aimed to reinforce the emotional wellbeing of children by strengthening the cultural, social, physical, and mental state of children.
TeamUp uses group games, sports-based activities, dance, and creative routines such as singing and breathing practices aimed to reinforce the emotional wellbeing of children.
The TeamUp intervention started in October 2021 by training the TeamUp trainers of different organizations and project areas. After the training, a series of cascade trainings were provided to facilitators of different project implementation areas.
The implementation phase started in December 2021 with 25 children aged between 6 and 11 years.
At first, the sessions were conducted at the camp’s Early Childhood Care Development Center once a week. After the first sessions, children were highly motivated to participate and by now the number of children who are taking part in the sessions has increased from 25 to 172. The number of children who take part in TeamUp activities is growing session by session and participants are highly motivated to be part of it.
After these first months, many encouraging results are being observed. The first positive outcome of the sessions is that the children’s school attendance has improved significantly. Abebe Peter, one of the Facilitators and local schoolteachers who is currently facilitating the sessions in Preschool, summarizes the impact of TeamUp:
“After attending TeamUp activities, no child wants to miss school. Children’s class attendance has improved amazingly. Before the intervention, many children missed classes week after week, but now children are attending schools on time and they are asking us to increase the number of sessions per week”
Another important result of the approach lies in the improvement of the psychosocial wellbeing of children. Participants are improving their communication, social interaction, and problem-solving skills. Their relationship with adults, caregivers, and school communities is also improving.
Bolis, a 10-year-old boy who is enjoying Team Up sessions in Tsore camp’s preschool TeamUp session explains the impact of the intervention it his own words:
“I asked the teacher to sign me up for the TeamUp group. What I like about the games is that it makes us all feel relaxed and happy. During the games, we communicate with each other and with our teachers. It helped me to express myself, my ideas, and thoughts without fear to everyone around me. I am so happy, and I love my parents, friends, and teachers.”
TeamUp is based in psychosocial group interventions to encourage learning through doing, playing, and moving together. It has a huge impact on unaccompanied, separated, and other vulnerable refugee children to relieve them from stress and enhance their resilience by enhancing social interaction with the community. When children participate in TeamUp sessions, they feel safe, protected, and supported.
Thanks to these positive outcomes, children are active in school and attend classes regularly. TeamUp has a direct effect on reducing child protection risks such as child labor, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, aggravated when children stay around home.