A week ago, Melissa, Chloe, Erasto, and I concluded a course on Basic Counseling skills conducted by Arusha Mental Health Trust (AMHT). Arusha Mental Health Trust, apart from giving training, offers also direct clinical, out-patient service in psychiatry and clinical psychology and counseling for people of all ages and from all ethnic backgrounds in English and Swahili. It has been a great opportunity for TFFT to meet AMHT people because we discovered there are a lot of services we can explore from them for the psychosocial growth of our kids. Since every team member is directly involved with our kids, TFFT finds it is very important for us to attend this course. All of us were exited to attend the course.

We started the course on 15^th Jan, 2013 we finished on 5^th March, 2013. The training was eight sessions, conducted on Tuesday from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. It was a long way, and the time to start class was a bit challenging, so sometimes we had to sacrifice our lunch to be at the training venue on time, but finally we all made it to the graduation day.

I learned a lot of things from the training—all the basic counseling things. This course helps me a lot in my daily work with our kids in the program and even in my life outside my job. It really added value to my daily life in general as well as my team members as we attended the course, I believe. We gained a lot from day one to the last day.

Here is the brief summary of what we covered for this course from day one to the last day:

Day one was introduction to counseling; I learned what counseling is, what counseling is not, confidentiality in counseling and mindfulness. Day two we focused on communication skills in counseling. These include effective communication, listening skills, and how we communicate. On day three I learned different skills a counselor needs to use in sessions. Day four was the preferred picture where by I learned how to help people identify, choose, and shape problem managing. Day five I learned how to help people implement their plans. Day six we had a look at some of the most common difficulties: anxiety and anger. Day seven, I learned grief, bereavement, and depression. This included accepting reality of the loss, working through pain and grief, emotionally relocating the deceased, moving on with life and ways to assist grieving clients. Finally the graduation day, the last day, we dealt with couples and families. Where by I learned eight stages of transition of family life and their development task, some tips for couples and six steps for resolving conflict effectively.

Isn’t this wonderful!  As a psychosocial and health coordinator, all these session added value to my daily work in the program. It has been an eye opener to me since most of the time I did sympathize with people in their situation. I learned that I need to be more empathetic in order to be able to solve the problem.  I learned not to be judgmental. Apart from the courses, I met different people with different experiences from different countries. I learned so many things from them which shape my thinking too.