MC Sync-Link 11

Member Care Update—November 2017

Special News—1 November 2017

During 2017 we are syncing our CORE MC entries with our monthly MC Updates. Essentially, we'll add a monthly weblog entry that contains brief excerpts from the MC Update for that month. By linking their two strap lines together, the purpose and potential for connecting these two MCA tools becomes clear: "expanding the global impact of member care...reflections, research, and resources for good practice." May these materials encourage and equip you as you endeavor to practice member care well, with character, competence, and compassion.

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Helping the Helpers

50 Resources for Humanitarian Workers

(reposted from the Global Integration Update, October 2017)
Click HERE to access it.

ICRC staff in Yemen. Reposted from Global Geneva magazine.

Unbreakable? Recognizing Humanitarian Stress and Trauma (Oct 2017)

“What pushes me to act as a humanitarian?...It’s possible to go two days without eating. But if you have water, you can survive.” “Of course we feel homesick, we are away from our families. But this is the humanitarian world and we have to accept how it is.” “Why would anyone kill a child?” “All these little girls [sexually abused] that came to us. And I have my own girl… [But helping] is the greatest joy that I can have.” Voices from the Field video, United Nations (August, 2014)

 In this Update we focus on the wellbeing and effectiveness (WE) of staff in the humanitarian sector. Organized into six topics, the sample of 50 resources are a mixture of current, core, and classic materials over the years. Several are translated into different languages. Keep in mind that everyone involved in the humanitarian sector benefits from special support to stay resilient and healthy. This includes administrators, managers, leaders, volunteers, international and local/national staff, the family members, and the organizations themselves. 

This Update’s emphasis on humanitarian WE is a follow up and application of the 10 October World Mental Health Day theme of “Mental Health in the Workplace” and the 19 August World Humanitarian Day theme of “#NotATarget.” The resources we feature and reference are also relevant for the overlapping sectors of health, development, mission, etc. We conlcude with a brief reflection on "Knitting the Network..for WE."

Warm greetings from Geneva,

Kelly and Michele

Share your comments/resources below 

or on the MCA Facebook page.

Share this Update with your colleagues and networks.

Global Integrators--24

Resilience for Global Integrators
Staying the Course

Rwanda, refugee tents circa 1994; photo credit UNHCR

We think that the time is coming for a diversity of colleagues to join together intentionally, visibly, and practically on behalf of global integration (GI). GI put simply is how we skillfully integrate our lives and values on behalf of the issues facing humanity. Likewise we think that the time is coming for colleagues to carefully reflect and act on what it means to be good global learners-practitioners--to seriously consider what it means to be what we are calling global integrators (GI-People).

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You can leave a comment and share resources
at the end of this entry and on our Facebook page for:
 Member Care Updates and Global Integration Updates.

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"Human resiliency is the ability to face reality: to engage with and grow through life's challenges and adversities via inner strength, social support, coping skills, and core beliefs/values including life purpose and spiritual meaning."
Kelly and Michele O'Donnell

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This entry focuses on the need for resilience in order to remain effective as global integrators. It is a reminder that GI Involvement comes with a cost, and sometimes a great cost to our personal stability, sanity, overall health, and  relationships via critical incidents, cumulative stress, etc.

Resilience is a protective factor of resilience (defined above) which is necessary to stay the course over the long-haul in GI. There are certainly so many more perspectives, principles, and resources that can be shared. We invite you to add some of yours via the comments section. It would also be very helpful to do a survey to assess what global integrators (and different types of global integrators) do to remain resilient.

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Member Care Update—November 2015
Resiliency Toolkit–Strengthening Ourselves and Others: This Update focuses on developing resiliency. It provides practical resources to  promote well-being and effectiveness (WE) for workers in mission, aid, and development as well as for member care workers themselves. The resources include brief assessments and articles–core items in a versatile toolkit to strengthen yourself and others. 
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Periodically we do special Updates that feature items to put in such a member care toolkit. Five past examples are archived HERE: 12/2009 Resiliency, 8/2010 Self-Care, 3/2012 Work-Life Balance, 1/2013 Cool Tools, and 10/2014 Creative Healing. We finish the Update with a reflection on resilience from Pearls and Perils of Good Practice ( excerpt below--available now as an ebook) as well as one of our favorite resiliency songs, Ready for the Storm.

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“For the mission/aid community, helping can often involve staying sane—and alive—in unstable, insane places....It is not that mission/aid work always deals with life-threatening experiences, of course. Rather it is just that helping to relieve the “maims and moans” of creation takes its toll. Mission/aid workers, like the people they are helping, have some special challenges and needs for resiliency...”(pp. 2,3)

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Headington Institute—Resources

“The Headington Institute partners with humanitarian relief and development organizations and emergency responders, before, during, and after deployment in order to ensure the wellbeing of individuals. Our team of psychologists, many with over 30 years of clinical experience, bridge cutting edge academic research with practical application at the field level, in order to strengthen the impact of humanitarian response and promote the long-term wellbeing of humanitarian personnel.” (from website) Some examples of their resources:

--Resilience

--Stress and Burnout

--Trauma

--Moral Injury (blog entries, quote below)

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“I became interested in moral injury a few years ago when I worked with military veterans who were struggling to make peace with things they had seen or done, sometimes more than 40 years after the fact. Moral injury…is defined as the lasting impact of participating in, witnessing, or failing to prevent something that goes against deeply held beliefs and values. People who are helping others during an emergency or after a disaster don’t have the same experiences as those who go to war, but the nature of this work can bring people face to face with human suffering and tragic outcomes. An emergency responder might be haunted by a life that could not be saved, or an accident that could have been prevented.” Lisa Finlay, Guilt and Shame: The Messy Part of Moral Injury, 20 July 2015

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and maintain a good sense of humor...

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Final Reflection

I finish this entry by citing a medley of quotes which appeared in my first entry on Global Integration, back in  January 2015. The quotes are basically exhortations to help us stay the GI course with integrity and skill.
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"Persevere as you pursue areas that you are passionate about and stretch yourself into new areas of interest as part of life-long learning.  As in most human enterprises, there can be political agendas, power dynamics, territoriality, and dysfunctional behaviors to navigate” (O’Donnell, 2012, p. 201).  Keep in the forefront the opportunities for “selfless moral struggle” in partnering with others (Patel et al. 2011, p. 90) and the “duty and choice to risk your own rights and well-being” on behalf of fellow humans (O’Donnell, 2011, p. 187). “Embrace lifestyles that reflect commitments to equality, justice, and wellbeing for all” (O’Donnell, 2012, p. 201). Develop your personal character and professional competence as a responsible global citizen committed to “seeing reality clearly… [including] physical and mental suffering due to human cruelty… [without giving up] our dream for a more loving and peaceful humanity” (Mollica, 2013, p.15). Connect with a supportive caravan of colleagues for your Global Integration journey in the service of humanity. Remember that in all you do and in whatever comes your way, “your task is to be true, not popular” (Luke 6:26, The Message)." 
 

Global MC—Pearl Four

Resources for Good Practice

Christ the Pantocrator (The Almighty)

Opening image from chapter four.

We are exploring member care by using brief quotes from the book, Global Member Care: The Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (published February 2011). Drawing on the metaphor from Rev. 21:21, each quote is like a huge pearl--a pearl gateway--that allows us to enter more fully into the global field of member care. https://sites.google.com/site/globalmca/

Pearl Four

“In the context of complex humanitarian emergencies and the rigours of life in developing nations, aid workers arrive on the scene expecting to enhance life, not just to neutralise pain. Humanitarian work is, afterall, a celebration of life, not homage to death and despair. …International aid is a challenge to the power not only of hunger, war, and poverty, but to cynicism. Faith-driven or secular, the workers who bring aid…are the living embodiment of a human conviction that wrongs not only must be righted, but that they can be righted.” (p.1)

“…the objective of stress and trauma management is not merely to protect local and expatriate staff but to encourage them to grow, flourish, and sow the seeds of well-being among colleagues and communities in which they work and live…One of the most effective ways both to protect and to flourish is to maintain excellent social relationships within and outside the work environment. (p.5) …Our findings suggest that strong relationships afford the best protection in traumatic and stressful environments.” (p.6) John Fawcett, excerpts included from Stress and Trauma Handbook (2003)

Reflection and Discussion

**Recall one aspect of your life/work that relates to the quote above.

**Have a go at connecting the above quote with a current international area that interests/concerns you.

Member Care and Lausanne 3: Blog Six

Managing Stress for Mission/Aid Workers:

Self-Assessment Tools

The Lausanne 3 Conference brought together some 4000 people this past October (2010) in South Africa. Here are excerpts from one of the seven MCA blogs on the Global Conversation portal at Lausanne 3.

The main question of this particular blog: How can we support mission/aid workers so that they are as healthy and effective as possible? Are sending groups doing a good job supporting their national/local and international staff? Yes, No, or Probably?!

(Video clip from Humanitarian Policy http://www.humanitarianpolicy.org/)

“Effective pre-mission training must begin with instilling awareness of the need for security and psychosocial support in the culture of organizations. Patched together, ad hoc, or solely programatic efforts will have only minimal impact. Security and support must be integrated, both structurally and functionally, into the mainstream of pre-field mission operations: mission planning, staffing, and budgeting.” Yael Danieli, Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills (2002), p. 383

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Stress Assessment

Here is a stress assessment tool (13 items) from ta booklet by the International Federation of the Red Cross, Managing Stress in the Field (2001).  It is based on “The Relief Worker Burnout Questionnaire” in Coping with Disaster, 1999, by John H. Ehrenreich. http://helid.digicollection.org/en/d/Js2897e/6.html

Instructions: Rate each of the following items in terms of how much the symptom was true of you the last month. 0 = Never 1 = Occasionally 2 = Somewhat often 3 = Frequently 4 = Almost always

__1. Do you tire easily? Do you feel fatigued a lot of the time, even when you have gotten enough sleep?

__2. Are people annoying you by their demands and stories about their daily activities? Do minor inconveniences make you irritable or impatient?

__3. Do you feel increasingly critical, cynical or disenchanted?

__4. Are you affected by sadness you can’t explain? Are you crying more than usual?

__5. Are you forgetting appointments, deadlines, personal possessions? Have you become absent-minded?

__6. Are you seeing close friends and family members less frequently? Do you find yourself wanting to be alone and avoiding even your close friends?

__7. Does doing even routine things seem like an effort?

__8. Are you suffering from physical complaints such as stomach aches, headaches, lingering colds, general aches and pains?

__9. Do you feel confused or disoriented when the activity of the day stops?

__10. Have you lost interest in activities that you previously were interested in or even enjoyed?

__11. Do you have little enthusiasm for your work? Do you feel negative, futile, or depressed about your work?

__12. Are you less efficient than you think you should be?

__13. Are you eating more (or less), smoking more cigarettes, using more alcohol or drugs to cope with your work?

Total Score: (Add up scores for items 1-13)

Interpretation: No formal norms are available for this measure. Based on the content of the items, a score of 0-15 suggests the delegate is probably coping adequately with the stress of his or her work. A score of 16-25 suggests the worker is suffering from work stress and would be wise to take preventive action. A score of 26-35 suggests possible burnout. A score above 35 indicates probable burn out.

Notes:

**See the CHOPS Adjustment Inventory (in several languages) and other free assessment tools at our MCA Reality DOSE web site.

**See the 2010 update of the Operational Security Manual in Violent Environments, from Humanitarian Policy Network (download it for free---discuss and apply!)

Reflection and Discussion
1. What did you think about the video clip on safety for humanitarian workers? What were the main points and how effective was it?

2. Take the assessment tool above on stress assessment. What did you learn about yourself and how might you better manage stress?

3. How can some of the above resources be used in your setting?

GP2: Good Practice by Good Practitioners

Growing as Good Practitioners:
Staying in Touch with Stress and Yourself

"Good" practitioners develop their character (virtues and resiliency) and competence (skills and knowledge), as part of their ethical commitments to do good and to provide quality services. Growing as good practitiners also means that we stay in touch with our inner world, stress levels, and the need to give/reveive feedback and support from trusted friends and colleagues.

Here is a tool that we have found uselful to help monitor our stress levels as well as the stress levels of mission/aid workers. It helps us stay in touch with how we are doing in the face of the demands of work, expecialy in "field" contexts. This tool is used by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and many other organizations (from the booklet Managing Stress in the Field, 2001). The booklet is very helpful and available to download for free at:

http://www.ifrc.org/cgi/pdf_pubshealth.pl?stress.pdf

Short Questionnaire on Stress

Instructions: Rate each of the following items in terms of how much the symptom was true of you the last month.
0 = Never 1 = Occasionally 2 = Somewhat often 3 = Frequently 4 = Almost always
*
___1. Do you tire easily? Do you feel fatigued a lot of the time, even when you have gotten enough sleep?
___2. Are people annoying you by their demands and stories about their daily activities? Do minor inconveniences make you irritable or impatient?
___3. Do you feel increasingly critical, cynical or disenchanted?
___4. Are you affected by sadness you can’t explain? Are you crying more than usual?
___5. Are you forgetting appointments, deadlines, personal possessions? Have you become absent-minded?
___6. Are you seeing close friends and family members less frequently? Do you find yourself wanting to be alone and avoiding even your close friends?
___7. Does doing even routine things seem like an effort?
___8. Are you suffering from physical complaints such as stomach aches, headaches, lingering colds, general aches and pains?
___9. Do you feel confused or disoriented when the activity of the day stops?
___10. Have you lost interest in activities that you previously were interested in or even enjoyed?
___11. Do you have little enthusiasm for your work? Do you feel negative, futile, or depressed about your work?
___12. Are you less efficient than you think you should be?
___13. Are you eating more (or less), smoking more cigarettes, using more alcohol or drugs to cope with your work?

Total Score: (Add up scores for items 1-13)
*
Interpretation: No formal norms are available for this measure. Based on the content of the items, a score of 0-15 suggests the delegate is probably coping adequately with the stress of his or her work. A score of 16-25 suggests the worker is suffering from work stress and would be wise to take preventive action. A score of 26-35 suggests possible burnout. A score above 35 indicates probable burn out.

Based on “The Relief Worker Burnout Questionnaire” in Coping with Disaster (1999) by John H. Ehrenreich.

Reflection and Discussion

1. Based on the above tool, what are some of the main areas of stress for you?

2. What are a few things you could do to help deal with such stress?

3. Who do you know that would benfit from using this tool?

Core Challenges for Aid/Mission Workers

During the month of January we are discussing some of the core challenges of aid/mission life. By core we mean the main inner issues and the main external issues that affect us, for bettter or for worse. They are those inner struggles that we all wrestle with—the matters of the heart (e.g., discouragement, forgiveness, grief). And these struggles are often stimulated by external circumstances or problems (e.g., cultural adjustment, separation, safety).

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Let's be sure to consider our own inner experiences too--the core issues for ourselves--as we converse about the challenges of aid/mission life.

Core Challenges for Aid/Mission Workers

• Pessimism--loosing perspective on the good things in life, due largely to the ongoing exposure to human problems and misery
• Staying centered--remaining connected with oneself in the midst of many responsibilities and the demands of living; and remaining connected with God
• Focusing on others' interest--self-preoccupation to the exclusion of others’ needs; not checking in to see how other people around us are doing
• Forgiveness--holding on to perceived injustices which arise from conflict with colleagues, the host culture, frustration with oneself, etc.
• Drifting--getting off the main tasks and the reason why we work in aid/mission, via distractions, interruptions, avoiding responsibility, etc.
• Transitional grief--the pain from saying many good-byes, multiple moves, missing loved ones, unresolved relationship issues, etc.
• Contentment--being satisfied in knowing that one is following his/her values, in spite of minimal work results, pressures to perform, and limited sense of fulfillment in one’s work

Reflection and Conversation:

• In what ways have these seven issues been part of your life?
• What helps you work through these issues?
• What other areas would you include as being core challenges?
• How do these issues relate to the research on stress and adjustment?

Note: This material is adapted from the article “Running Well and Resting Well” in Doing Member Care Well (2002). This article and book are available to view or download for free at http://www.wearesources.org/