By Annabelle Timsit
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After Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Save the Children developed an evidence-based program geared towards giving children and the adults who care for them the skills they need to cope with loss, fear, and stress. That program, Journey of Hope, has since been adapted to help kids who have experienced trauma not just from natural disasters, but also from problems like poverty, community violence, or abuse. More than 85,000 kids in the US have received the training so far. The eight sessions are structured around different themes, including anger, fear, safety, worry, self-esteem, bullying, and community. Kids learn to express their feelings to a group, and how to cope with the emotions of fear or grief brought on by a traumatic event. They also do activities that help them put those skills into practice. In one, the group gathers around a parachute and shakes it vigorously as a metaphor for the feeling of anger. The facilitator asks kids questions like, “If you get angry, what should you do?”
The goal is to teach kids resilience, which gives children “the ability to cope with what the trauma causes you to feel, and to come back from a negative expression of those feelings,” says Ann Davis, a program specialist at Save the Children who was taught by mental health professionals to train Journey of Hope facilitators.
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In Texas, Save the Children has partnered with local universities, childcare centers, and mental health providers, to offer Journey of Hope programming to schools and after-school programs across the regions that have been most affected by Harvey. The organization aims to serve more than 100,000 children and adults before August 2019–an ambitious goal, given that only 789 children have directly received the training so far. But according to Save the Children, close to 9,700 children have benefited from the various emotional support programs the group has rolled out in Harvey-affected areas.
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Research suggests the program really does help kids affected by natural disasters. Between 2014 and 2015, a team of scientists evaluated the impact of Journey of Hope after a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, injuring 377 people and destroying two schools. In 2016, the researchers published their findings in Springer Science+Business Media; they found that the program “is effective in enhancing peer relationships and prosocial behaviors” and that “the intervention may be effective in supporting youth with non-clinical levels of distress overcome a traumatic event.”
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