Building Resilience in Children and their Communities Following Disaster in a Developing Country: Responding to the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti

Abstract

This paper provides an example of a resilience-based intervention approach to acute trauma that addresses individual-level resilience in children and in those that care for them, and the community as a whole. Resilience-based approaches to trauma intervention focus on activating the protective processes in each individual child to lead to better psychosocial outcomes. However, rebuilding or strengthening community capacity is essential to supporting resilience at the community-level. This paper illustrates how one foreign NGO provided resources, training, and guidance to community members who were seeking help in implementing trauma intervention. Through equal partnership with local leaders, the intervention was translated to meet the specific cultural and contextual needs of children and childcare workers in the tent cities and schools of Port au Prince following the earthquake. Marrying financial and technical support with local expertise resulted in a sustainable, trauma-informed, culturally-oriented solution to providing intervention post-earthquake.