Continuing our series of articles from our Annual Report 2023/24, we outline here our work on our Counselling Enhanced Reach Project (CERP III).
Survivors Fund (SURF) has developed and delivered an array of mental health projects to support survivors over the past 20 years. With funding from Clifford Chance through the Cornerstone programme, the Counselling Extension Response Project (CERP II) enabled SURF, in collaboration with its partners, to provide access to phone-based counselling and supplementary support to vulnerable survivors of the genocide, and related vulnerable persons, from April 2021 through to October 2022.
The need and demand for counselling services made accessible through CERP II are greater than ever, in part due to the reduction in government funding for dedicated counselling services for survivors. The take-up and effectiveness of the helplines and peer counselling made possible by CERP II has proven to be more impactful than ever due to greater awareness of the support that is available and how to access it.
The Counselling Enhanced Reach Project (CERP III) is realising the ambition and potential of the project to ensure that survivors can continue to access the counselling support that they require, through to the 30th Anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi, and then embed the model so that such support continues to be available beyond the end of Clifford Chance funding. The project commenced on 1st December 2022 and will run through to 31st October 2024.
During the period of Year 1 of CERP III, the main focus of the interventions has been to continue providing phone-based and peer counselling support to survivors of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda across the country. Support also has been provided to related vulnerable persons, including the children born after the genocide and other members of the survivor’s household who have mental health issues affecting their well-being.
The counselling support has been particularly important during the commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi from April to July, as during this time many survivors experience acute trauma which can severely impact on their abilities to engage in any income generating activities.
Those who have benefited most from the counselling services are members of the local survivors’ organisations in partnership with Survivors Fund (SURF), which include AVEGA (National Association of Widows of the Genocide), GAERG (National Survivor’s Association of Graduate Students), AERG (National Student’s Association of Genocide Survivors) and IBUKA (National Association of Survivor’s Organisations).
The main objective of the project was to support all categories of survivors and related vulnerable persons who are facing mental health challenges across the country. But during the interventions, in particular the phone-based counselling, we have received as well non-survivors requesting mental health support.
The most significant number of callers to the helpline are elderly widows who are experiencing extreme trauma. There are many reasons for the difficulties that they are experiencing, but these are exacerbated often by their poor physical health, as many are suffering from chronic diseases related to their experience during the genocide.
At the beginning of CERP III, we set targets that to achieve at both the output and outcome level, with specific indicators. We are happy to report that we are making good progress on many of these targets, as we prepare for the commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda from April 2024. We expect that there will a great demand for mental health support over this time, and as such we will be concentrating efforts to ensure that we extend awareness of the mental health support available, by promoting the toll-free helplines to help survivors and non-survivors who are facing metal health challenges to access the support offered by counsellors.
The partnership has enabled us to handle 11,373 calls to the helpline from 1 December 2022 to 30th November 2023. Those calling the helpline were facilitated by counsellors and peer support counsellors. For this reporting period, 5,923 have called the helpline for the first time, and it is expected that this number will increase further as we approach the 30th Anniversary of the Genocide. Through funding made possible from the project, our partners will be assisted to promote their helplines through radio advertising and social media.
Our partner organisations have benefited significantly from the project. This project has enabled AVEGA to set up its own Agahozo Call Centre which is helping them to identify other challenges their members are facing through the calls they are receiving from all over the country. This support from Clifford Chance has enabled partners to discuss and explores ways of continuing providing remote counselling after the project end. This is through discussions with other partners including the Rwanda National Police, Ministry of Health, and Rwanda Biomedical Centre, amongst others. Another change is the way professional counsellors have been supported to improve their knowledge and aptitude to deliver more effective counselling through the training delivered. This has been achieved through the supervision sessions with a professional psychologist in quarterly meetings and trainings.
In order to help the project to be sustainable, we have decided to increase the number of Peer Support Counsellors (PSCs) in different communities, to enable them to work closely with Community Health Officers (CHOs) to identify people in that community who are facing mental health challenges. As per this reporting period, 384 peer support have been trained on the basics of mental health and how they will be reporting to the CHOs at the district level. The trained PSCs have been able to provide assistance to 7,390 people in need during this reporting period.
This project has enabled Survivors Fund (SURF) and our partners to train 188 CHOs from across three regions of the country, who in turn are then able to inform and educate the Community Health Workers (CHWs) that they work with about mental health issues affecting people, especially survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. As a result, 1,430 CHWs are now better informed and they are working with community health centres to identify those who are facing issues of mental health for further support.
Josephine *
“My name is Josephine, and I live in the Southern Province of Rwanda. My story is very long and I cannot narrate it now, but I want to give you a short testimony of how phone-based counselling has changed my life. During the genocide I lost all my family, including my 8 children and husband, as well as my father and mother and siblings. I have suffered from severe trauma ever since the end of the genocide up to now. People from my community knew that it was just a matter of time before I would die of this grief. I could not eat or take time to talk to others.
“A friend of mine learned of the helpline, and the number to call, through an advert on radio. She wrote it down and came to me asking if we can call and check if it is true. Personally, I could not make any call, but she helped and call the number. A counsellor responded and asked what the problem is that I have. I could not tell my story since it was the first time that I would have done so. But we talked for about an hour and she told me to call again the next day.
“We started that way and we talked every day for at least 10 sessions. I started feeling something is changing into my life, even though I did not know the person who is helping me. The only knowledge I had is she was working under AVEGA, which I know is for genocide widows. After several calls with the counsellor, I started developing some positive attitudes, and now I have started taking to others and thinking about my life. I believe that this is progress and I will continue to try think that way, more positively, about my future.
“I am very grateful for the helpline, and my counsellor, for the support I have received.”