Paul Calvert spoke with Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, about their holistic approach to therapy and progress being made to gain rights for disabled people in Palestine.

Restoring The Lives of Disabled And Traumatised Children In The West Bank

Paul: When was the YMCA started in Beit Sahour?

Nader: The YMCA started a long time ago in Beit Sahour. It started in the 20's actually, but the YMCA rehabilitation programme started in 1989.

Paul: You run rehabilitation programmes for disabled children, tell us about that.

Nader: We came to work with children of disability, after finding they are a big percentage of the young people who have been injured and developed trauma during the first Intifada.

The first initiative was to work with those who develop trauma because of political conflict; the young boys and girls who get injured and get taken to medical rehab centres and hospitals, then return back to their homes with their trauma and psychosocial problems. The idea was to help them reintegrate into the community.

We separated our work into two main directions. The first direction is working with the survivors of political conflict, who develop traumas and psychosocial difficulties. The other group is the people with physical disabilities, regardless of whether it is because of conflict or because of any other reason.

Paul: How many disabled children do you have coming to the YMCA?

Nader: We are working yearly with an average of 500 children with disability, or young people with disability.

Paul: What projects do you do with them?

Restoring The Lives of Disabled And Traumatised Children In The West Bank

Nader: The work is a holistic approach in counselling. Actually we are trying to re-integrate them into the community. We do a thorough assessment of the reality of their difficulties, problems, hopes and potentials, and then we build a rehabilitation plan together with them.

After this we try to go through this rehabilitation plan, which is based on a holistic approach and rehabilitation. I mean by holistic approach we are not offering counselling only, or vocational rehabilitation only, or whatever. We are trying to find ways to bring people back to normal life, so you find us building access facilities in their homes, offering medical assistance aid like wheel chairs, crutches, or whatever. We help in adapting the education places, like schools and public used buildings, with the cooperation of the community, as well as working intensively in bringing people back either to education or to vocation rehabilitation.

Education means bringing them back to schools and coordinating with the school system and developing the understanding of people with disability amongst the school system, like the teachers, head masters and the students, about the rights of people with disability to be included. Also the right of inclusion of people with disability in schools and in scholastic life, as well as developing the potential of doing changes in the physical environment of the school to be accessible for people with disability.

The other part, which is in the vocational rehabilitation, starts with vocational counselling and knowing more about them; about their interests and abilities. We have the unique thing in this country, which is the vocational assessment unit. It's a series of exercises. You go through it and work against time and error, and you get very precise knowledge about your abilities and your interests, then if you match it with the job requirements, this leads to having a very precise and successful design towards your future career. Then we take them to vocational training centres and workshops or companies, wherever this is relevant to their interests and abilities, and we offer them the possibilities to be trained and later on being hired in whatever job they train for.

Paul: What sort of psychological problems do you see?