WASHINGTON, June 1 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova – On June 1 the world celebrates the International Children’s Day, one of the oldest international holiday established in 1950.
The festivities, however, come as millions of children all across the globe are denied their basic human rights, subject to psychological and physical suffering and get injured or killed in bloody battles.
Hundreds of organizations aimed at protecting children’s rights are established in every country on a daily basis. Children and War foundation is one of them.
Atle Dyregrov, head of the organization told RIA Novosti Sunday that the main aim of Children and War is to teach children cope with problems they had to live through once, as well as to train grown-ups dealing with children experiencing critical events.
“The most common issues are post-traumatic stress reactions, as well as anxiety, sleep problems. We train group leaders how to teach children to cope with various problems they face after experiencing a critical event including intrusive images of they’ve seen, avoiding when they avoid things too much, or when they have hyper-active nervous system that needs to be calmed. We don’t do interventions with children, we make sure that these interventions work,” Dyregrov said.
Children and War foundation was founded 13 years ago. Currently its members work in Syria, Egypt, Libya and African countries.
Dyregrov said also that his organization most often work in countries close to the conflict.
“For example, we don’t go inside Syria. We hold trainings either in Turkey or Oman. We have done trainings right outside of Iraq. Sometimes we have health professionals come for training to Norway. We did that during Bosnia conflict. Next week two of our teams are going to Vietnam,” he specified.
The head of Children and War stressed that working with children is sort of reward in itself.
“We can learn a lot from children. Knowing that you can help children is very rewarding and motivating.”
