A three day Workshop on 'Trauma Competent Caregiver Training and Workshop Module 1' was organised by the department of Psychology, Salesian College Siliguri in collaboration with Child Healing Centre, Bengaluru. The Child Healing Centre is a wing of the NGO Santhosh Samsara Social Charitable Trust started by Mr George Ebenezer. His aim is to sensitive people on the emotional and physical abuse faced by children & teenagers & lending a helpful ear to them. With this aim in mind the Child Healing Centre organised training workshops in different parts of the country.

On 24th morning the inaugural session started with a welcome speech by Mr Peter Lepcha, Head Department of English, Salesian College Siliguri. The resource persons were welcomed by offering Khadas by the students of the department. The inaugural session continued and the Vice Principal Fr (Dr) George Chempakathinal, delivered the keynote address, briefing about the World Health Act of 2017, highlighting about mental and physical illness through a power point presentation, which had a very interesting question “Are you mentally ill?” The presentation set the mood to think and tune towards what followed in the training sessions.

The participants ranged from school teachers to NGO workers, and people associated with handling children & teenagers, involved in looking after orphanages, children homes parish churches of different denominations. The resource persons were Miss Sulochona Shrestha, Mr. Danny B. Moses and Dr Eileen Solomon from Bengaluru. They exposed the concept of Trauma and how to deal with a traumatised person or a child in a lucid manner. They explained that a child may be sexually, physically, or verbally abused. They might come from hard places and may have witnessed varied traumatic experiences in life. But still people like Ms Sulochana and Dr Eileen adopt children from hard places and rear them up to give a witness to love and care. Every child is a gift, every child is unique, and they made it evident through visual demonstrations and several real life video clips.

The whole workshop included six sessions comprising of several games to make the whole sessions interesting. Bringing a traumatized child to be normal again is a challenging process and the participants were very well trained in accomplishing this process. The participants were taught the art of healing and they were taught that a child needs time to cope with a new environment, new people and new place. Safe adults should provide a comfortable place, time and affection for the child to complete this process of healing. It was a very enriching and informative workshop. The workshop ended with Fr (Dr) Matthew Pulingathil, Rector Salesian College Siliguri, sharing his own experiences in life with children and Fr (Dr) Feorge Chempakathinal, Vice Principal Salesian College Siliguri, by way of delivering valedictory speech. Ms Susweta Acharya Dutta, Head, Department of Psychology, proposed the vote of thanks and Mr Bhasker Malu, Faculty, Department of Psychology, Salesian College Siliguri facilitated the giving away the certificates and mementos.