Charitable Foundation “Tree of My Life”: “Our task is to give people a sense of stability”

More than 15 years ago, the GURT Resource Center began working with such social technology as self-help groups (group psychosocial rehabilitation). There are many examples of positive social changes and successful personal stories in the world practice that became possible thanks to this tool.

Over the years, we have been convinced that this is an effective format of social work. Group participants overcome crises, recover from difficult life events, and learn to counteract negative social phenomena. This is especially important for Ukraine today, during the war. Many Ukrainians are going through crises and losses, and it is in such groups that they can find support and recovery.

GURT is actively developing this area in Ukraine. The work is carried out in close cooperation with regional public organizations that work with vulnerable groups. We would like to introduce you to Ukrainian NGOs that use group social and psychological rehabilitation in their work.

One of them is the charitable organization “Tree of My Life Charitable Foundation”, which operates in Zakarpattia – in Uzhhorod, Mukachevo and Svaliava. The organization is headed by Liubov Mykhailiuk. The team’s work is aimed at providing psychological support during the war to those who need it.

The team of the psychological resource, educational and cultural project “Tree of My Life” was the first in Zakarpattia to provide psychological assistance in groups to volunteers, IDPs and local residents since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. 

HOW SHE STARTED WORKING WITH THE GROUPS

Liubov Mykhailiuk first worked with support groups in 2017 as part of a project dedicated to the rehabilitation and habilitation of ATO participants. That project was aimed at adapting soldiers who had returned from the war to civilian life and their families to new conditions.

“I saw how effective group work is,” says Liubov. “ The effectiveness lies in the fact that group members become supportive of each other for a long time.

When the full-scale invasion began, and based on the experience of 2014, it was clear that it would not end so quickly, Liubov Mykhailiuk and her colleague Ksenia Tarnavska gathered like-minded people – counselors, psychologists, psychotherapists – and decided to create psychological support groups for volunteers in three cities of Transcarpathia at once. Volunteer work is extremely resource-intensive, so many people face emotional burnout, which, if nothing is done, leads to exhaustion, reduced immunity, exacerbation of chronic diseases, and psychosomatic disorders.

This is where the big work began. Within a few days, psychological support groups were set up for the first internally displaced citizens. In early March, it became clear that a huge number of people were arriving and would continue to arrive in Transcarpathia. So, in parallel with the support groups for volunteers, psychological support groups for internally displaced persons were launched. The groups were formed according to the age limit, needs and requests of fellow citizens. The work was carried out in three cities at once – Uzhgorod, Mukachevo and Svalyava.

This rather spontaneous, demand-driven psychological and educational project, which took a month and a half to complete, became the basis for the creation of the Tree of My Life charitable organization in April 2022. The project team included (and continues to include) specialists in various fields. These are resource-oriented counselors, Gestalt counselors, body-oriented psychologists, simvodramatists, and art therapists.

“At that time, we realized that our task was to give people a sense of stability, so that they would understand that here and now they have permanence, security and comfort,” says Lyubov Mykhailyuk,“especially for internally displaced citizens. We intuitively tried to make the space where the meetings were held cozy. Thanks to the support of friends from Belgium, we managed to equip such a room in Uzhgorod. People from Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv regions said that they felt good here, as if they were at home. This is the most valuable thing to hear.

At the psychological support groups, the participants lived and experienced, learned to feel their emotions, monitor their states, shared their personal experiences and the horrors of the full-scale invasion. Our colleagues had no such experience. We learned from our participants and gave them what we knew and could. Over time, these psychological support groups became self-help groups, and by that time the participants already had enough resources and strength to be supportive of each other.”

ABOUT COOPERATION WITH THE RESOURCE CENTER OF THE GROUP

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the team of the “Tree of My Life” Charitable Foundation has been working with internally displaced persons and local residents, relatives and friends of combatants, and volunteers. A year later, they began cooperation with the GURT Resource Center. Thanks to the financial support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the organization received a mini-grant to create conditions for the arrangement of premises for comfortable holding of the GSD. But this is not the end of the joint work, it is only gaining momentum. Representatives of the charitable foundation were active participants in the Conference of Self-Help Practitioners organized by GURT in late July in Lviv region. At this meeting, specialists from all over Ukraine met to discuss challenges in methodology and find effective solutions in helping victims through the work of SAGs, and in these matters Tree of My Life has extensive practical experience.

“Cooperation with GURT has supplemented our knowledge and practical experience with certain techniques that we now apply in our practice,” notes Ms. Liubov. “These include expanding contacts, sharing experiences, quality interaction and support. In the future, we hope for a strong partnership, further exchange of experience and fruitful team meetings.”

ABOUT THE VALUE OF GROUP WORK

There are important rules that define the work of the team in the area of group social and psychological rehabilitation.

Rule one: everyone’s experience is important. It happens that a person, coming to the group, cannot clearly articulate his or her feelings even for himself or herself – and it is the experience of others that helps to define and realize his or her own.

Rule two: each participant is a value and a gift for the other. Everyone can learn something new for themselves.

What is important is that people in the group become friends, find common interests, and continue to communicate even after the work of the CAG is completed. They become a support for each other. 

ABOUT THE POTENTIAL OF SELF-HELP GROUPS

Self-help groups in the classical sense are just beginning to develop in Ukraine. Ms. Lyubov is convinced that one of the key concepts in the work of SAGs is responsibility – each participant must understand their own responsibility. First and foremost, a person is responsible for himself or herself-for his or her actions in the group and outside of it. In this approach, the facilitator is, relatively speaking, the administrator who organizes the meeting, but the initiative to come to the meetings must come from the participants.

Unfortunately, not all people in our society are ready to take responsibility, but this needs to be developed and taught. We should start with psychological education. Explain that it is important to be able to ask for help, that this is not a weakness, but a step of a responsible person. The person who asks for support is the one who wants to master the situation but realizes that he or she cannot do it alone. A person in a group asks for such support (even if they do not expressly say so) and receives it.

Now, in times of war, it is not recommended to engage in group psychotherapy, as psychotherapy involves regression. A person is immersed in deep problems, and this limits their determination to act. Psychological resource groups and self-help groups are focused on the here and now. They are designed to help you understand your current state, what you can build on, what internal and external resources you have. The purpose of such groups is to enable a person to support their family, friends, and colleagues after the group. Having a resource, they will be useful in their community and will want to develop the environment in which they live.

For successful group social and psychological rehabilitation, it is important to understand all these internal mechanisms and interrelationships, because they explain the essence of the self-help group. 

ABOUT WHAT THE TEAM IS MOST PROUD OF

Liubov Mykhailyuk: “Every day in our work, we are proud of the personal relationships we have with participants, patrons, benefactors, partners, and grantors. There are people behind large corporations and holdings, and this is the most important thing. In our cooperation with GURT, the most important thing for us is the relationship with a team whose values coincide with those of our team.”

This material was prepared within the framework of the project “Psychosocial Self-Help to Support Communities in Ukraine” implemented by the GURT Resource Center with the financial support of Sweden.

Source : www.gurt.org.ua