Grieg Foundation is an essential contributor to the work of CAW. Through a cooperation agreement entered into in 2021, with the aim of building local capacity to help children cope with psychological trauma, Grieg Foundation secured the funding of NOK 1 000 000 for a two year period. This has enabled CAW to respond to the traumas caused by the war in Ukraine, cascading the knowledge and use of TRT both within Ukraine but also in the countries receiving the refugees from Ukraine. CAW has also been able to perform trainings of significant importance in Bangladesh, in Syria, Lebanon and other arabic speaking mental health and psychosocial workers located in war zones and refugee locations, having the TRT manual translated into Bangla, Ukrainian, Polish, Arabic, and started an important research project in Palestine for the effect of the grief manual.  

The overall aim of the common project between Grieg Foundation and CAW is to build local capacity to help children cope with psychological trauma to contribute to reducing the treatment gap and to contribute to children’s rights being fulfilled. The project enables CAW to help translate psychological research based knowledge into action in low-resource settings by building capacity. This project enables Children and War Foundation to train helpers in the use of an evidence based manualized group intervention to which has been found to improve psychosocial wellbeing, which is also important for education.

This project will enable CAW to expand and respond to more requests for capacity building for helpers, both professional and non-professional. These helpers, teachers, carers and others will be able to help children so that get better mental health and coping skills, within the frame of their regular work, whether this is school, home, health services or other. The outcome of the project will be children’s improved mental health. We estimate that each training will benefit at least 150 children, but as the helpers acquire skills they will continue to use, the number should be higher. Thus, if the project enables CAW to do 10 trainings, the direct beneficiaries should be at least 1500, but is likely to be substantially higher.

As CAW has a long tradition of evaluating all activities, and also engaging in high quality research, the current project should also add to the knowledge base on how best to support children under different conditions.