IDRAAC has received a grant from the French Embassy in Lebanon on November 2015 to implement a project aiming at addressing the needs of the whole Assyrian community: the Assyrian Refugee community and the Assyrian Lebanese hosting community. The project targets all age groups from the Assyrian community: the children, the adults and the elderly through providing mental health and psychosocial support to the entire Assyrian community and through capacity building of Assyrian community workers, and providing medical and mental health support to the elderly.

IDRAAC organized a press conference in collaboration with the Assyrian church of the East, on Wednesday October 25, 2017 on the premises of the University of Balamand in Achrafeh. During this conference, IDRAAC presented its project which supported the mental health and psychological assistance for Assyrian refugees and their host community and was funded by the French Embassy in Lebanon.

The project provided medical, psychological and psychosocial support to children, adolescents, adults and older people of the Assyrian community currently in Lebanon, whether they are refugees from Syria or Iraq or that they have been living in Lebanon since many years. The project has also helped to build the capacity of Assyrian volunteers who deal with children and adolescents in their community on a daily basis.

As part of this project, trainings were organized to identify mental health problems that affect people of all ages and all categories. These trainings also provided volunteers with the tools to support mothers to better manage their children's education by encouraging them to listen to them and stay away from physical and verbal violence. They have also enabled teachers to encourage children, some of whom face school problems, to be resilient and to help them overcome the pressures of everyday life. 

Psychiatrists and psychologists from IDRAAC also trained Assyrian volunteers in the field of mental health and gave educational lectures to community members.

You can check the press coverage on the following link and a video which was shared during the press conference on the following link.

A brochure was also developed to share the results of the project and can be downloaded on the following link.