I am a licensed psychologist and the owner/director of Bloomsburg Psychological Center, LLC, in north-central Pennsylvania. BPC employs 11 licensed therapists and sees 150-200 clients each week for outpatient psychotherapy and assessment.
I realized just how acute the problem of AIDS-orphaned children in Ethiopia is when my son returned from a 6-month visit to that country two years ago. The lives of these children have been devastated by poverty, hunger, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and in many cases, the death of both parents. These children also suffer emotionally from the multiple traumas they have experienced.
Hope For Children was founded by Yewoinshet Masresha (pictured above) in 2000 and provides more than 800 orphans with food, shelter, clothing and education, as well as medical and psychological care. When I first spoke with Yewoinshet about her organization in the fall of 2008, she told me that even after the physical needs of her children are met, they still experience depression, anxiety, anger outbursts, nightmares, flashbacks and behavior problems such as bed-wetting, biting and running away. Yewoinshet told me that she and her staff had been using play therapy with the children, but that they had a strong need for additional psychological training in addressing trauma (see my son’s brief video clip of Yewoinshet’s work above.)
Much of my professional training has been in trauma, especially in EMDR. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a therapeutic approach that has been proven effective for post-traumatic stress disorder and is currently being used in Veteran Hospitals to treat our service men and women returning from Iraq. Since 1996, all BPC therapists have been trained in EMDR, and because of this, we have had unparalleled success in helping our clients regain their emotional health and lead the lives they want to live.
EMDR-HAP, the humanitarian branch of EMDRIA, responded with great enthusiasm when I contacted them about bringing EMDR training to the psychologists, social workers and counselors of Ethiopia. In order to determine the readiness of the therapists for EMDR, find an appropriate location for the workshops and teach basic trauma training, I traveled to Addis Ababa this spring for three weeks. During my visit I trained 87 professionals and graduate students from various organizations in basic trauma identification and stabilization, taught a class on directive play therapy and provided daily supervision and consultation to two therapists trained in EMDR the previous fall in Kenya. I also stayed with Yewoinshet and her family and had the wonderful opportunity of learning how the Ethiopian culture and approach to mental health differs from ours. This allowed me to adjust the trauma training to the specific needs of the Ethiopian professionals.
The impact of this initial work is already reaping much success as these therapists begin to use their new ideas and tools with multiple clients on a daily basis. I am continuing their training over the Internet and it is very rewarding to hear about how significantly their lives and their clinical results have been improved.
All of my travel and training costs have been supported through generous donations by individuals like you and 100% of the money donated has been directed to the projects I have outlined in my blog Outreach Ethiopia. Nothing has been spent for administration costs. I spend many unpaid hours each week continuing this work over the Internet and organizing my next trip, scheduled for October this year. During this next visit, I and two other therapists will teach EMDR to 27 therapists, do follow-up supervision and consultation with the therapists both individually and in groups, and offer basic and advanced trauma training to many other professionals. This trip will again be a 3-4 week absence from my private practice.
One of my major long-term goals is to provide EMDR Level l and Level ll trainings every 6-12 months to Ethiopian therapists, increasing as fast as possible the availability of effective psychological care to the children and adults of that country. My other goals are described more fully in my blog.
Please click on the link below to read my blog Outreach Ethiopia that describes my initial work/trip to Ethiopia. I update my blog periodically and will do so frequently during my second trip this fall. After reading about my efforts, should you wish to support my work, there are two tax-deductible nonprofit organizations with whom I work and which will accept donations made on my behalf. If you work for a corporation that matches donations to health and human services organizations, kindly submit a request for a matching gift. Both will send you acknowledgement of your gift along with documentation for your tax records.
To designate your donation to support my work, please put "Dorothy Ashman" in the "Designation..." or "In honor of..." box on the web sites listed below. If you are mailing or faxing the forms, please make sure you request your donation go to my projects, even if there is not a specific box for that information.
EMDR- Humanitarian Assistance Program provides assistance to train therapists in EDMR to combat the after-effects of trauma, whether from natural or man-made disasters. Click here to donate.
Hope For Children-US supports more than 800 AIDS-affected Ethiopian children with food, medical care, clothing, shelter, education and psychological services. Click here to donate.
Thank you so much for your support. Enjoy my blog Outreach Ethiopia and please contact me if you have any questions about my work.
Dorothy Ashman
dorothyashman@gmail.com
