Psychological First Aid (PFA) 4-Module Course

Welcome to an introduction to our Psychological First Aid (PFA) Course!

This is our first meeting for this course

Participants meet weekly from April 7 through July 2021. You can sign up for the full course here. 

We have designed this course on Psychological First Aid (PFA) for individuals and organizations who are supporting people in the immediate aftermath of a crisis or trauma event. We also recommend this course for people who want to deepen their psychosocial support skills. Through this training we practice:

• Deepening the listening process at each step
• Helping communities find their own solutions and paths to resilience
• Self-Care for responders and their supervisors as they do PFA work in community
• Discovering how a mind/body technique like Focusing can enhance empathy and resilience

Because most cultures of the world emphasize the group over the individual, we explore ways to help you balance support of both family/community and individual needs.

Psychological First Aid, as an approach for use by first responders in disasters and other emergency situations, uses a resilience, deep listening approach to community recovery. We found it very useful in Liberia when Pat worked there during the Ebola virus crisis. Communities were so traumatized and needed ways to be heard, find help, support each other and move forward in positive ways.

Certification is available

Focusing Initiatives International  has a proven track record of working in collaboration with communities and organizations to bring psychosocial support and psychological first aid  trainings. We have a total accumulated experience of over 50 years in training, teaching and program implementation. We have worked with communities, humanitarian organizations and their staff, and public health organizations and personnel particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Middle East, Africa, Japan, and North America.

Register for the full course here

Course Fees/Cost

The Course fee is $200 per person.  (Scholarships are available–email Pat)

Many participants in our programs live in regions of the world where they cannot access programs like ours because they don’t have the ability to pay.  Sometimes, these communities are where PFA is needed the most. For this reason, we need additional donations. We ask that you make a donation to cover the cost of your learning, and if you have the means, make an additional donation to help cover the cost for others.

Certification available

We do offer certification for this course. Should you wish to obtain a certificate in Psychological First Aid, you must write to the instructor within the first week of the course and arrange for payment of the additional fee of $50 (or to request a scholarship). Expectations for obtaining a certification are outlined below.

Module 1 will begin on April 7th, 2021.

This is an introduction to the course. For full details and links for registration click here.