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.

Nader: The psychological problems are between deep trauma, to psychosocial stresses, and tension. Deep trauma we find mainly with those who develop psychological trauma, because of political conflict, like children and ex-detainees.

It's important to let you know that Israel is arresting children between 12 and 18 years of age. The vast majority of them are accused of throwing stones. The number of people arrested yearly is growing, and these are for the last five years, it became an average of 1,200 children in prison.

These children are usually arrested at home; few of them are arrested in the streets. They follow others and arrest them at homes, early mornings usually. They break through, they shout and wake them up, and handcuff them and blindfold them, and take them to interrogation.

This is a very serious problem and impacting them seriously, so they get out with deep trauma. They get out losing their schools. They get out with no possibilities to return back to normality, unless we intervene with them.

We offer counselling and we offer reintegration with the schooling. Also we try our best to build hope for them, to let them look to the light at the end of the tunnel, because they don't see any light. They see everything is just about revenge, trauma and extreme attitudes that have been developed because of this pain they are going through.

These are mainly kids who are coming from poor communities. They have limited opportunities, and no plan for life after being released from prison. They stay till early morning on TV's and computers; they wake in the middle of the day; and they have no plan for their life. They want to charge their mobiles; they want to smoke and they are having intrusive thoughts as a result of their trauma. They are a very easy victim for whatever extreme you can imagine, whether it's political extremism or social extremism.

We believe this is the core of our service and mission as a YMCA and as a Christian organisation living here, in order to restore hope. That's why we put our main slogan, 'Restoring hope for better life'. We derived it from John 10:10, that I came to give them life and to live it abundantly.

Paul: For the disabled children in particular, what would they be doing if they weren't here at the YMCA?

Nader: Our work is an outreach work. This centre is a referral centre. It's the headquarters for the work, but we have 11 teams covering the whole area of the West Bank. In each district we are having a team of counsellors, social workers, and community workers. This place here is a place where we are leading the work, and also we are offering the vocational assessment. It's also for those who would like to spend some time far from where the trauma took place, because there are lots of people who live with severe trauma, and it's advised by field workers to have these kids here to stay for several days receiving intensive counselling, and then sent back and they will follow up the work with them in the outreach.

Paul: The programme is building dignity into their lives isn't it?

Nader: Yes definitely. When you are losing potential for being a member in a community, this restores your hope for a better future and restores your hope for the possibility of being a member in your community. It's a key issue.

Advocacy is one of the components of our holistic approach. We do advocacy for the rights of people with disability in the country; we do advocacy for the equal rights for people with disability, and we believe that and we try to convince everybody that disability is part of the human nature and diversity. So we are men and women, we are children and old people, we are adults and youth, and we are able and disabled. We believe that this is how we are diverse as a human being. It's not something exceptional, it's something existing in each and every community in the world. The community should be open. The community should be accessible. The community should develop itself to include everybody, including people with disability and including children.

This is why we believe it's about dignity. It's not about charity. It's about letting people know that this is their own right to be members in the community, and the community should adapt to be a more dignified community for all its citizens, including people with disability.

That's why we believe that they have the right for a decent work like any other people. They have the right to decent education everywhere. They have the right to leisure time like others, so it's not an isolated group that should be kept aside and fed and given whatever. This is the exclusion that we are trying to reduce and trying to create better understanding in the Palestinian community about this issue.