PHILIPSBURG — The Student Support Services Division (SSSD) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth & Sport will be having a Return to Happiness facilitators training for persons in our community interested in volunteering. Return to Happiness is a psychosocial recovery program for children who have experienced natural disasters, conflicts or violence, where children are usually most affected. In such situations, it is important to create creative opportunities for children to tell their stories, express their fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams, through a wide range of activities.
The goal of the Return to Happiness program is to create such opportunities for 5-12 year-old children who have experienced a natural or manmade disaster to process their experiences through a series of guided play activities for the purpose of reducing their post-disaster anxieties and beginning to re-establish their sense of joy, happiness, security, and confidence in adult protection. The Return to Happiness program began in 1992 and has since then been implemented, by UNICEF and their partners, in many countries including Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Belize. A Caribbean Return to Happiness version has been developed, which has been implemented in Grenada, St. Lucia, the Turks, and Caicos Islands, Anguilla, St. Vincent and St. Maarten.
Persons interested in volunteering as a facilitator for the Return to Happiness program should contact the Student Support Services Division at 543-1235 for an application package. All applicants will undergo an interview/selection process given the nature of the program.
Applications are available and the deadline for submission is September 28, 2018. The training is scheduled for October 9 and 10 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Participants will be required to attend all training sessions.
The Student Support Services Division (SSSD) provides psychological services, counseling services, social work services, speech-language pathology services, educational diagnostic services, career services, Crisis services, and parent education services.
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