NaCSA, Grace Land carries psychosocial reparation
The National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) during the weekend organized a psychosocial reparation session in the Western Urban and Rural Districts through Grace Land Counseling Services on the theme: “KOL HAT TOK” meaning peaceful dialog.
The process according to Grace Land Counselors targets war victims who still bear psychological pains through personal experiences during the course of the eleven year long callous and brutal war in the country.
In an interview with the Co-coordinator of Grace Land Counseling Services, Madam Bundu Manneh, it was revealed that government alongside the NaCSA has an intention to bring in development in communities that will benefit the whole of the citizenry of Sierra Leone but stated that it could only be effective after a healing process of psychological pain incurred during the war in the country, through counseling and de-dramatization of war victims in society. “My organization,” she said “was contacted to carry a psychosocial counseling programme in the Western Rural Districts of the country by preaching forgiveness and love amongst victims and perpetrators alike, other organizations,” she added, “were also contacted to do the same work in North, South and Eastern Provinces of the country respectively”.
Madam Bundu maintained that they have over the period of three weeks been able to carry on with their counseling survey in six communities including Goderich, Regent, Lumley, Murray Town, Moyiba and Grey Bush. She further noted that at the end of every meeting in the communities, participants were organized into four groups to discuss the negative and positive effect of the war on children, women, men and how to prevent the show of negative effects of the war in the country.
In her testimony, Agnes Cowan a war victim, disclosed that she lost her left leg during the Ecomog intervention in Freetown in 1998 through a bomb fragment which led to the amputation of the leg, She maintained that she is taken care of by her grandparents who also served as counselors, “I was so discouraged at the beginning since I was by then just a teenager, but the series of counseling I got from friends and relatives helped me forget and pursue life’s endeavor for development”, she said and continued that she is presently pursuing a marketing course at the LICCAL Business College.
In her response, Local Government Counselor Aminata Koroma of Ward 390, Constituency 111 told participants and staff of Grace Land Counseling Services that she was happy with the effort made by them to be part of the process which according to her was very timely and necessary at the time as there are many affected persons in her ward, which include Murray Town Aberdeen etc, adding that Aberdeen Road carries the majority of amputees in the country. She appealed to NaCSA and the government to take proper consideration of the result and recommendations that will be made by animators of Grace Land and other organizations, as she put it “it will help in a very long way in the rehabilitation of the minds of victims.”
Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!
© 2009, https:. All rights reserved.
