Building Resilience for Humanitarian Aid Workers

During times of conflict, humanitarian aid workers aim to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity. Aid work is compassionate in nature, but can take an emotional toll on the providers. Working in difficult circumstances and constantly witnessing the suffering of others places humanitarians in environments of chronic stress. Programs that pro-actively address the stress of this work on the physical, mental and spiritual levels are rare. The Garrison Institute is taking an innovative approach to changing that, developing its Contemplative-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) program to build resilience that provides tools for humanitarians to take into the field, so that this work can be generative rather than exhaustive.