Anar’s community-based model has the same general structure in Gaza as it does in the West Bank. Here, Mohammed El-Sharef, Anar’s Gaza-based psychosocial support counselor and community mobilizer, leads a session with one of the four community accompaniment facilitators and a group of caregivers. Mohammed, whose background includes a master’s degree in Community Mental Health, has trained these four facilitators and provides ongoing technical and administrative supervision so that they themselves receive enough support to support others. Technical supervision at Anar involves the careful discussion of specific cases to provide the very best group and individual approach.

One of the most important techniques Anar is using in Gaza is debriefing, the chance for caregivers to talk openly and honestly about their experiences in a community conversation led by a trained facilitator. To be as responsible as possible to the gravity of what Gazans face, Anar is not engaging in therapy or intensive mental health work, which is referred to other trusted professionals and organizations. Instead, it is offering tools for caregivers to navigate the reality of the moment, which includes space where women can gather away from family, ask questions about caring for and educating their children, and learn techniques for coping with the extreme stress they are carrying.

As is the case with all of its work, Anar uses tools to help caregivers cope with extreme stress—tools that are individualized based on a group’s needs. These tools include breathing exercises, peer support, and drawing on the imagination to connect to positive memories and dreams. Anar’s approach is designed responsibly to be used in groups still in the midst of experiencing genocide and displacement. The sessions in Gaza take place in a range of locations, most often tents and parts of buildings that are somehow still intact despite the destruction all around.

Finding moments for laughter and joy is absolutely essential in Anar’s accompaniment model, as is drawing on the perspectives and skills of community members. When Anar needs supplies, like vests, equipment, and snacks, it’s a long, arduous process to secure resources for basic needs, and Anar is committed to providing as many resources as possible to center people’s dignity. If you look closely, you will see that the Anar logo on the back of this facilitator’s vest is hand embroidered, as opposed to printed, as the vests in the West Bank are. That embroidery is done by Gazan women who bring their extraordinary gifts to the community. Printing a vest is nearly impossible in Gaza, but this community-based and arts-focused approach is at the center of Anar’s values.

As we’ve mentioned, Anar’s work in the first month of the pilot has been focused on building relationships and trust with caregivers. Not only do they need direct support from Anar for caring for each other and building their own resilience; their belief and investment as partners in Anar’s work is also crucial for meeting the needs of their children who will soon participate in the CBPSS sessions. If you look closely at this photo, you will see a potted plant in the top right-hand growing bright and green amidst the destroyed buildings beyond, an apt metaphor for these extraordinary caregivers.

The arts remain an essential tool for caregivers to enter into discussion and humanize their experiences, while embracing aesthetic and embodied moments of joy. Again, while Anar is deliberately not focusing on direct conversations about individual and collective trauma, facilitators create arts activities that allow people to process their experiences in new ways.

There are very real differences between Anar’s accompaniment in Gaza and the West Bank. For example, because the internet in Gaza only opens after 10:00am and operates sporadically and unpredictably, sometimes only for an hour or two each day, the Gaza team members cannot join Anar’s morning staff meetings. It is also essential to remember that facilitators in Gaza are themselves carrying a great deal, so the West Bank-based team is extremely careful and sensitive in meeting their needs as part of the larger accompaniment process.

As they are engaging in conversation about their experiences, many caregivers have specific requests that Anar then tries to figure out how best to meet. Because children have not been to school for three years, which means very young children have never been to school, caregivers are requesting psychosocial education for their children aged 3-5 to help them grow developmentally. In addition, literacy is a huge issue, so caregivers are asking about the possibility of remedial education support in the next stage of Anar’s work. Anar is currently evaluating how best to address that very real need after the pilot is complete.

It is important for us to remember that in Gaza, people are now living together in camps who previously came from different walks of life and did not necessarily spend extended time in the same place. That’s one of the things that makes Anar’s methodology so important and remarkable—groups are built around new needs and values and the interdependence of community-based psychosocial accompaniment.

Caregivers gather with facilitators to discuss and process how they hope to meet any number of needs. Sometimes, Anar strives to meet these needs directly, as is the case with parents’ requests for education for their teenagers around bodily autonomy; sometimes, Anar connects with other organizations when the needs are more immediately essential, like help with clean water, sanitation, and shelter. But, as you see here, space and time together for joy and laughter are also absolutely essential parts of this work.

At the end of the second week with a group of caregivers, Anar facilitators asked what they were hoping for that Anar had not yet provided. To the team’s surprise, they requested a beach party—an opportunity to experience their full humanity beyond very real daily struggles and a chance to embrace joy and resilience with each other. Plans for this beach party are currently underway, and Anar will be bringing it to fruition in mid-July.

Children supported by Anar in Qaffin in the Tulkarem Governorate