Applying a Trauma-Lens to Peace Projects

Participants will enhance through an assessment framework and readings their lenses for applying trauma responsiveness to project planning. By looking at specific ways the group has experienced trauma-responsive or trauma-clueless project and program management, we will identify challenges, resources, and possibilities for applying a trauma lens. The training is designed in a way that allows participants to choose to focus on one area that is particularly helpful for their work. They may choose to focus on indicators, language and examples of messaging to use with donors and/or partners, or ways they might apply a trauma lens to conflict analysis or system analysis. Or they may choose to work with the assessment framework using instructor-provided case studies and/or bring resources and cases that have been part of their experience. Throughout the training, we will work on project ideas and acknowledge the possibilities, boundaries, and limitations for applying a trauma lens to peace projects. All sessions (and self-guided learning) will involve some self-care and collective care practice.

By the end of the training, participants will have

- Deepened their understanding of the meaning of being “trauma-sensitive” and the implications for peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
- Generated ideas on how to apply a trauma lens to conflict analysis, project planning and implementation.
- Familiarized themselves with examples of how organizations create a trauma-sensitive working environment and enhance structures, processes and practices to address needs emerging from collective trauma.
- Considered possibilities, boundaries, and limitations – personally and professionally – for addressing the impacts of trauma.
- Identified and developed communication tools to use with donors and partners to convey the importance of including trauma-sensitive perspectives and approaches in projects.

The course is designed for people who have been working to understand the sources/causes/origins of trauma responses, the diverse impacts of trauma on individuals and collectively, and how those impacts - and responses to them - can sustain or interrupt cycles of harm. Building off this broad foundational understanding of these dynamics from prior learning, participants in this training will focus on the specific application of that knowledge to project planning, management and communications. This course invites participants to engage actively, bringing ideas and curiosity about their own practical scenarios to exchange with fellow participants.

As planners, designers, implementers, communicators and evaluators of projects and programs in traumagenic circumstances, we do well to ask different questions that emphasise the realities of trauma responses in our planning, implementation, and evaluation processes. Team leaders, individuals working independently, facilitators and trainers, project designers, implementers, communicators and evaluators can all benefit from this course that invites participants to focus trauma-responsiveness on project design and planning.

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