Day Ten

My Dinner with Angela

I think it happened more or less like this. I began by stating that I was becoming concerned that in nine days the only thing I'd done that looked like we might be able to repeat in the future was the work with the HIV/AIDS program. As rewarding as the day had been, the follow up in October would not take more than a few days the way things stood last night. She then filled me in on her work with Coerr, the Thai NGO, and her mandate to both facilitate a working relationship between Coerr and the Karen Women's Organization as well as train Thai and Karen social workers of vastly different educational backgrounds to do effective treatment with children. After a while she changed the subject to how fascinated she was in the book I'd sent her on EMDR, the trauma treatment both Peggy and I do in the US. After I explained how it actually worked in my practice, she asked about using it with children and the light bulbs started going off.

We plan to meet tomorrow to make specific plans to spend several days in our next trip in October training those therapists who are the most skilled and proficient in English how to do EMDR on a paraprofessional level as well as teach a larger group our version of Therapy with Children 101. This is a model that lends itself to Peggy's and my plan to return three times per year for about 12 days at a time. Trainees will get new knowledge and skills, have about four months in which to practice the skills with support from Angela, then move on to the next level. The most skilled among them will have the opportunity to go through a process of facilitating trainings, student teaching, co-teaching and eventually training on their own.

I met with Dr Terry today and filled him in on the positive connection we made with the HIV/AIDS peer counselors and VCT Medics yesterday. I reported that both groups expressed a desire to repeat the process on a regular basis and that Akiko would be facilitating both groups. He told me that World Vision has chosen the Mae Tao Clinic over the local Thai hospitals as the place they operate their support programs because of the sophistication of the program. He sees potential for these medics to participate in a TOT (train the trainers) program and then help other programs meet their level of expertise. He was very open to BBP being a part of that.