Moments of Refuge for Ukraine
Mission, Strategic Plan & Projects Operations
I. THE UKRAINIAN HUMANITARIAN & MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS: WE MUST ACT NOW
Over 13 million Ukrainians have been forcibly displaced due to the violence, atrocities and tragic injustice of the invasion. Despite the extraordinary collective courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people, a mental health crisis is fast-emerging from the trauma, stress, and tragic injustice of the invasion and refugee crisis. Our findings among forcibly displaced Ukrainians point to exponentially growing rates of mental ill health characterized by distress, despair, and social disconnection.
II. THE MOMENTS OF REFUGE PROJECT: CLINICAL SCIENCE WITH A SOCIAL JUSTICE MISSION
We have therefore launched the Moments of Refuge for Ukraine. Our mission is to empower forcibly displaced Ukrainians to begin to heal and recover, and thereby to help prevent the destructive long-term consequences of forced displacement for families and communities. To achieve this aim, the program delivers our evidence-based mindfulness intervention that is trauma-sensitive, socio-culturally adapted, and designed for diverse forcibly displaced people and contexts, and now tailored to Ukrainians. Our randomized clinical trial research has previously established the safety, efficacy, feasibility and scalability of Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Refugees for even the most vulnerable forcibly displaced people (e.g. survivors of torture, human trafficking, former child soldiers). The intervention model is designed to empower and enable forcibly displaced people to experience moments of refuge and safety in their own minds and bodies in the short-term, and thereby facilitate the process of recovery and healing post-displacement to unfold in the long-term.
III. MOMENTS OF REFUGE FOR UKRAINE: PHASES OF IMPLEMENTATION
PHASE I: Global Reach Through Online Platform. The intervention will be delivered by means of our Mindfulness-SOS for Ukrainians Online Platform (www.momentsofrefuge-ukraine.com). This approach will ensure the broadest global reach and access of the intervention program, including for the most isolated and vulnerable Ukrainians, and offers maximal choice, flexibility and geographic mobility for Ukrainians post-displacement. This approach also allows humanitarian aid, re-settlement, and health organizations, as well as individual clinicians, to immediately deliver the program without the implementation barrier of training and certification. Importantly, the online platform includes a built-in capacity to conduct, cost-effective large-scale monitoring and evaluation of the program that enables us to continually optimize its delivery and therapeutic impact. The digital platform thus has the capacity to reach and effectively impact the recovery of a limitless number of Ukrainians in need. Data from our pilot research are promising – we see initial evidence of acceptability and engagement with the digital intervention among Ukrainians around the world. We are now also working to develop an app-based extension of the online platform that will work off-line.
PHASE II: Community-Embedded Groups. In addition to the mobile-health online delivery platform, the program will be delivered on-the-ground within and by Ukrainian communities through Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Ukrainians. This is our group-based delivery format that provides more intensive intervention and support, yet is still brief and low-cost. Phase II community-embedded implementation will, like Phase I, entail systematic monitoring and evaluation of the program to optimize its delivery and therapeutic impact. Building on existing and emerging technological systems within Ukraine and across communities hosting forcibly displaced Ukrainians around the world, will be critical to enable and accelerate implementation of Phase II. Most notably, we foresee implementing Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Ukrainians to groups of adult Ukrainians through the large global network of digital classrooms that have been established around the world to reach and educate Ukrainian children. This existing community-embedded digital solution will connect groups of Ukrainian parents (primarily mothers) with instructors trained the expertise to deliver Mindfulness-Based Trauma Recovery for Ukrainians as well enable monitoring and evaluation to optimize program delivery and its therapeutic impact. This is a an innovative community-embedded technology for intervention implementation that we believe has exciting and scalable potential.
IV. MOMENTS OF REFUGE FOR UKRAINE: IMPACT GOALS
I. Intervention. To empower and enable Ukrainians to cultivate moments of refuge and safety in their own bodies and minds, and thereby initiate a process of recovery from trauma- and stress-related mental health outcomes of conflict and forced forced displacement.
II. Prevention. To prevent destructive consequences of conflict and forced displacement for individual health (e.g. prevent suicide), for families (e.g. prevent intimate-partner violence), for children (e.g. prevent inter-generational transmission of trauma and stress), and for Ukrainian communities (e.g. prevent fragmentation of community resilience and social capital).
III. Social Impact Multiplier. To augment and thereby amplify the impact of social justice and mobility policies and programs for Ukrainians post-conflict and post-displacement. Because mental health problems are a barrier to benefiting from such policies and programs, systemically targeting mental health in this way will multiply the social impact of such programs.
V. SUPPORT MOMENTS, SUPPORT UKRAINIAN RECOVERY
We are now reaching out to partners who identify with our mission and evidence-based strategy to support Ukrainians and Ukrainian refugees around the world. Together we are raising $1 million to invest in and support the initial year of the initiative.
In the initial phase of the project (initial 9-12 months), the primary modality of reach and impact will be delivered vis-à-vis our Mindfulness-SOS for Ukrainians Online Platform and its systematic monitoring and evaluation. Consequently, Phase I of the project will be carried out by our team at the University of Haifa in close partnership with Ukrainian community leaders and dozens of partner organizations embedded in refugee Ukrainian communities around the world and throughout the Ukraine. Accordingly, projected costs support the core Moments of Refuge for Ukraine program and monitoring-evaluation team.
In the second phase of the project (9-24 months), the project’s modality of reach and impact will be expanded to also entail training, dissemination and community-embedded implementation of the more intensive group-based Mindfulness-Based Trauma for Ukrainians, along with its systematic monitoring and evaluation. This second phase of the project will be coordinated by our team at the University of Haifa as well as multiple on-site project implementation teams in Ukrainian refugee communities around the world and throughout the Ukraine. This phase, and crucially work within Ukrainian communities, will be facilitated by our partner Ukrainian community leaders and partner organizations embedded in refugee Ukrainian communities around the world and throughout the Ukraine. Accordingly, projected Phase II costs will grow significantly beyond Phase I costs.
We foresee that Moments of Refuge for Ukraine will be needed for at least the next 3-5 years, during which Ukraine and the global Ukrainian community will need to recover and rebuild. If you like to discuss how you may join us, please contact Professor Amit Bernstein: abernstein@psy.haif.ac.il
Global Partners: The Moments of Refuge Project at the University of Haifa has partnered with Global Empowerment Mission, Pandemic of Love, the Ukrainian Mindful Awareness Project, Mindful.org, Smartaid, BStrong, and TeleHelpUkraine.
Moments of Refuge Project 2020-2030
Moments of Refuge Project is a global science-based initiative applying our mindfulness- and compassion-based intervention model to empower diverse forcibly displaced people to begin to heal and recover, and thereby prevent the destructive long-term consequences of forced displacement for families and communities. Moments is grounded in 3 core beliefs. First, we believe that mental health and the right to recovery following forced displacement is a basic human right that we must guarantee. Second, we believe that mental health is inextricably linked to social justice, equality and mobility. Third, we believe that it is our ethical obligation to act and resist injustice with compassionate action grounded in the strongest science and evidence available to us. We have thus worked for over a decade to bring the most ambitious, rigorous and compassionate science that we can envision to empower and support refugees to heal from the trauma and injustice of forced displacement.
Our work to-date has primarily focused on African asylum-seekers who have sought sanctuary in the Middle East (Israel). Over the coming decade, we aspire to systematically grow and scale-up Moments of Refuge through a network of collaborating scientific, implementation, and refugee community partners. Moments partner sites will reach forcibly displaced communities, from multiple origin countries and socio-cultural groups, multiple post-displacement settings (e.g., urban, refugee camp), and regions around the world including Europe (e.g. Italy, Germany), the Middle East (e.g. Jordan, Turkey), Africa (e.g. S. Africa, Uganda), and N. America (e.g. Texas, Boston). We believe strongly that the scientific foundation and approach to Moments of Refuge is critical to ensure its impact.
Although our team believes that our mindfulness-based intervention model will prove to be a transformative and restorative innovation in refugee global mental health and social justice, our good intentions and even exciting findings to date are not enough. Thus, Moments is designed to allow us to transform the lives of forcibly displaced people, while concurrently rigorously monitoring, evaluating and thereby optimizing the efficacy and safety of our mindfulness-based intervention model as well as its access and reach. We believe that this approach will deliver the greatest possible social impact return on investment.