Psychosocial support is a necessary element to create a comfortable and safe environment within children and their parents. In Gaza, our psychosocial specialist and facilitators held 233 psychosocial sessions for both children and women. These sessions dealt with ways of facing problems, planning for future, life skills and ways to cope with fear.

Caritas Jerusalem aims to build and improve the self-worth of the most vulnerable especially the children by decreasing the stress through different activities and entertainment games. Through the past months, we have helped 457 children and Ahmad is one of them 

Ahmad is an eleven years old boy from Al -Shuja'iyya who lives with his parents and three siblings. Ahmad was withdrawn, afraid of others, cannot defend himself and he had a constant feeling of inferiority due to the bad economic and social situation of his family.

Ahmad suffers from epilepsy, anemia and physical problems which affect his temper. He started to attend the psychosocial sessions but was very passive and he did not participate in any kind of activities with others. The psychosocial specialist planned an individual sessions for him with expressive arts and relaxation activities. As a result, Ahmad managed to overcome his bad temper and started to mingle with other children and gradually became more and more sociable and was able to express his feelings freely with his family and peers.

One of the major reasons also for Ahmad’s improvement is the cooperation of his parents with the psychosocial specialist and implementation of the guidelines on how to deal with this child.

This project is implemented by Caritas Jerusalem in partnership with Caritas International Belgium and funded by Belgian Development Cooperation.