Healing the wounds of trauma is at the heart of the Peter C. Alderman Foundation (PCAF) as it is at the heart of all NGOs dealing with conflict and postconflict situations.
Central to this exercise are the trauma workers themselves who may be from the areas of conflict themselves or from elsewhere, including coming from outside the country. The trauma workers go under a variety of names and have varied backgrounds
ranging from lay therapists, faith healers, traditional healers to highly trained ones like nurses, social workers, psychologists or psychiatrists.
Whereas the principle of giving therapy may be standardized, their various experiences may not. Often the therapists may have different motivations for engaging in this work. Therapists from areas of conflict may themselves have suffered trauma and may be suffering from their own post-traumatic disorders. On the other hand, in giving therapy, all therapists, irrespective of background, do experience the pain of listening to and seeing the trauma on the victims. Often the therapists may feel traumatized (vicarious traumatisation), may feel fatigued/ burnt out by the exercise or may develop counter-transference reactions to the patients or the perpetrators. Moreover, they work in very hard conditions of poverty, misery and adversity.