Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, International Medical Corps’ response has grown from a team of 30 based in Mariupol, in the southeast, to some 400 staff members working from locations around the country. Our response has always evolved—as the population’s needs have shifted, we have shifted our operations in response, to ensure we’re meeting the most urgent needs.
Recently, when we closed our office in Stryi, in western Ukraine, at the end of June to focus additional resources on civilians and communities located closer to the fighting in the east and south, our Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) team did not simply pack their things and move on. Instead, they held a lessons-learned workshop for partners and stakeholders to share the best practices that they’d learned while supporting Ukrainians in the region, as well as the needs that remain.
MHPSS specialist Zeinab Ajami explained that one of the goals of the workshop was to reflect on lessons learned about what worked and did not work during the two years and four months the Stryi office operated. “We always want to improve program design and enhance implementation,” she said, “and that means identifying and addressing existing gaps in MHPSS needs.”
Representatives of three local NGOs that International Medical Corps works closely with—Destigma, Unbroken and Wings of Hope—attended the workshop, along with some 50 representatives of other organizations, including the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Coordination Center for Mental Health of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Attendees worked in groups on the lessons-learned exercise and then presented their findings.
These included a need to better support the families of members of the military, as well as people with addictions or special needs, and men in general—because they typically participate less in MHPSS-related activities. Another identified challenge included a lack of school psychologists, with only one for every 700 children. That said, the groups also discussed successes, such as the increasing involvement of government officials in MHPSS-related planning, new levels of engagement among veterans and new abilities to reach more communities.
Participants were able to represent their organizations, network and build new relationships. “It was successful in that we gave our partners the chance to speak about their interventions—to show their successes, to show their potential, to show their programs in front of everyone,” Ajami said, adding that she has since observed exchanges of contacts and increased cooperation among the workshop participants.
Olga Lazarenko, a trainer with Première Urgence Internationale, fully agreed with the workshop’s knowledge-sharing approach, saying it builds self-reliance and comparing it to the ways in which MHPSS teaches people to care for their own mental health. “Transferring such knowledge and skills strengthens Ukrainian society and enables it to cope with challenges and prepare for other challenges,” she said. And Yevhen Fedichkin, from Destigma, said he is optimistic that there will be more chances for cooperation in Lvivska oblast, pointing to the establishment of a mobile MPHSS service in 2022. “It’s an association of state institutions, professional organizations, international donors and volunteers,” he explained. “This is an unprecedented example of working in unity.”
Halyna Gordon, head of the Coordination Center for Civilian Support at the Lviv Regional Administration, stressed the benefits of cooperation among everyone involved in MHPSS. “What we have seen from our coordination is that we have become such a platform, such a starting point, that a system of cooperation can be built,” she said. “Very often, when we inform small organizations about certain services, we are like a reinforcement for them—and can even provide them with a list of people looking for this help.”
Gordon added that though challenges remain, there have also been many changes and positive results over the last two years. International Medical Corps, for its part, has been happy to play an important role in providing MHPSS in Lvivska oblast—just as it continues to do throughout other parts of Ukraine.