trainings and short coUrses

Description: This course explores the intersection of mental health care and peacebuilding processes. It examines how unresolved trauma, collective grief, and psychological wounds fuel ongoing conflict, and how psychosocial interventions can be intentionally embedded within peacebuilding programming to address the root causes of division and promote reconciliation.

Aim: To build participants' capacity to design and deliver integrated MHPSS and peacebuilding interventions in post-conflict and fragile settings, in line with IASC and international humanitarian standards.

Experiential Learning: Participants take part in live community dialogue simulations, conflict transformation exercises, and peacebuilding role-play scenarios drawn from real East African case studies.

Description: This course addresses the profound psychological impact of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and equips participants with the knowledge and skills to provide trauma-informed, survivor-centred MHPSS support within SGBV programmes. It covers referral pathways, safe disclosure practices, and multi-sector coordination.

Aim: To enable practitioners to integrate MHPSS principles into SGBV prevention and response programming, ensuring that survivors receive holistic, dignity-affirming care that addresses both their psychological and social needs.

Experiential Learning: The course uses case-based learning, survivor-centred practice demonstrations, safe facilitation exercises, and structured group debriefs to build practical competence in a safe learning environment.

Description: This course is designed for practising counsellors, therapists, and mental health programme managers who wish to develop formal clinical supervision competencies. It covers models of supervision, ethical frameworks, the dynamics of the supervisory relationship, and how to support practitioners experiencing secondary traumatic stress or burnout.

Aim: To develop competent, reflective clinical supervisors who can ensure the quality, safety, and ethical integrity of psychosocial practice within organisations, NGOs, and clinical settings.

Experiential Learning: Participants engage in live supervision practice sessions, observed role-plays with structured feedback, peer supervision triads, and reflective practice frameworks applied to real case material.

Description: This course provides a thorough grounding in trauma theory and evidence-based approaches to trauma counselling. Participants learn to recognise the signs and symptoms of trauma, PTSD, and complex trauma; understand the neuroscience of traumatic stress; and apply trauma-informed care principles across a range of helping professions.

Aim: To equip participants with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to provide effective, trauma-sensitive support, and to embed trauma-informed care principles into their work with individuals, families, and communities.

Experiential Learning: Through experiential learning methodologies, including body-based grounding exercises, trauma-informed role-play, client simulation sessions, and group reflection ,participants develop both skill and self-awareness as trauma-informed practitioners.

Description: This specialised course focuses on the mental health and psychosocial needs of children and young people. It covers child development theory, common mental health conditions in childhood and adolescence (including anxiety, depression, behavioural disorders, and trauma), and age-appropriate therapeutic and supportive interventions.

Aim: To build the capacity of practitioners, educators, parents, and community workers to identify, understand, and respond effectively to the mental health needs of children and adolescents, in accordance with child rights frameworks and international best practice.

Experiential Learning: Participants practise child-friendly communication techniques, conduct simulated child assessments, engage in play therapy demonstrations, and apply adolescent-sensitive counselling approaches through structured role-play.

Description: This course provides a compassionate and evidence-based framework for understanding and supporting individuals and families through grief and loss. It covers the psychology of bereavement, cultural dimensions of grief in East African contexts, models of grief counselling, and how to facilitate grief support groups.

Aim: To equip participants with the knowledge, skills, and personal awareness required to provide sensitive, culturally grounded grief counselling and bereavement support in both professional and community settings.

Experiential Learning: Participants take part in guided self-reflection exercises on personal loss, grief counselling role-plays, group support circle facilitation practice, and culturally contextualised bereavement case studies.

Description: This introductory course is designed for individuals who are new to counselling or wish to develop foundational helping skills. It covers the core principles of effective counselling , including active listening, empathy, reflection, paraphrasing, and the therapeutic relationship , within an ethical and professional framework.

Aim: To provide participants with a solid foundation in essential counselling skills that can be applied in a range of helping and support roles, including community health work, social work, teaching, and pastoral care.

Experiential Learning: The course is heavily practice-based, with participants spending the majority of contact hours in skills exercises, paired counselling practice, recorded session reviews, and structured peer feedback sessions.

Description: This course combines trauma counselling theory with practical training in Psychological First Aid, the internationally recognised, evidence-informed approach to supporting people in the immediate aftermath of a critical incident or disaster. Participants learn to provide safe, humane, and compassionate support that stabilises distress without causing harm.

Aim: To equip participants with the skills to deliver immediate, effective psychological support during and after crises, disasters, and traumatic events, aligned with WHO, IASC, and international PFA standards.

Experiential Learning: Participants practice PFA in live simulated crisis scenarios, including post-disaster community response exercises, individual acute distress support simulations, and field-based assessment role-plays designed to replicate real humanitarian contexts.

Description: This advanced module builds on foundational MHPSS skills by focusing on the specific psychosocial needs of vulnerable and marginalised groups, including refugees and displaced persons, survivors of conflict and torture, persons with disabilities, older adults, and those living with chronic illness. Participants learn to adapt MHPSS approaches to different cultural, social, and operational contexts.

Aim: To develop participants' ability to design and deliver contextually appropriate, population-specific MHPSS interventions that are inclusive, rights-based, and responsive to the unique vulnerabilities of diverse groups.

Experiential Learning: Participants engage in targeted role-plays with simulated vulnerable clients, case-based group problem-solving, cultural competence exercises, and field scenario analysis drawn from East African and global MHPSS programmes.

Description: Designed specifically for community volunteers, first responders, teachers, religious leaders, and non-specialist helpers, this course introduces the principles and practice of Psychological First Aid in plain, accessible language. No prior mental health training is required. Participants learn to recognise distress, provide safe and supportive presence, and connect people to appropriate care.

Aim: To empower community-level responders with the knowledge and confidence to deliver immediate, accessible psychological support to those affected by crisis, loss, or adversity — extending the reach of formal MHPSS services into communities.

Experiential Learning: Participants work through realistic community crisis scenarios, practise PFA conversations in pairs, and take part in group exercises that simulate community-level response to emergencies such as floods, displacement, or sudden bereavement.