Events

Stress Management Workshop in Greece
By Christine Botejue-Kyle and Angela Griep

In order to help UNVs dealing with the stress they face working in the mission, the UNV Program Kosovo organized six stress management workshops which took place in Greece between October 2001 and July 2002.

The seminars about stress management taught participants how to identify stress and how better to cope with it. Special attention was paid to substance/alcohol abuse and stress arising in conflict situations. After 3 days participants left the workshop with a number of tools on how to cope with their personal and professional stressors. In addition to this, participants also got time off to relax during their time in Greece. The hotel, where the seminars took place is located directly on the beach and volunteers availed of the massage on offer and of course the swimming pool and sea. So people who do not manage to recover at least a little bit must be really stressed…..

The idea for the seminars was developed after a report was released by UNV on the issue of debriefing and stress related issues which UNVs may suffer, particularly after intense assignments in Peace- keeping missions. An intern working with UNV HQ, wanted to review the type of support mechanisms in place for UNV’s during their assignments. In 1999, she conducted a survey of past and presently serving UNV’s to determine what types of debriefings and assistance they were provided during their assignments. One of the recommendations made in the report was the importance and need for a support structure for UNVs working in large scale intensive peace keeping missions. UNV Bonn piloted the first UNV Stress Counselor post in Kosovo in 2000 and since this time UNMIK has incorporated the UNV Counselors into the UNMIK Staff Welfare Office. Currently UNMIK has approved two posts for UNV Stress counselors – one based in Mitrovica and another in Pristina.

As a result of this initiative, a survey was conducted in September 2001 asking UN Volunteers in Kosovo what type of training they would be most interested in receiving. An overwhelming majority of those who responded, all cited Stress Management as an important area in which training was sought. As a result of this, UNV Bonn decided to approve our request for a pilot program to hold UNV stress management workshops in Kosovo.

UNV, UNMIK staff welfare office and outside resource persons have generated the basic materials for these seminars. Christine Botejue-Kyle (UNV Program Manager), David Halley (UNV, Social Worker), Barbara Winkler (UNV, Psychologist working in the UNMIK staff welfare office), Anton Hookes (UNV, Social worker) and Christina Kaiser (Caritas Kosovo, specialist for conflict resolution) adapted these materials to the special surroundings of UNV in Kosovo. “We have created a program which I think is a pretty good program for educating people on what stress really is, how it comes into our lives, how it affects us and what we can do to minimize those affects”, David explains.

In order to constantly optimize the quality of the 3-day workshop all participants are encouraged to give verbal and written feedback to the facilitators. “We incorporate feedback from one workshop into the next, feedback on the actual training itself and the structure of the training (like how many breaks we have, how many hours of session we have each day and how long the entire training is)”, David points out.