Mental Health Matters

As a family, we have made a concerted effort to develop more robust systems for mental health support at the Rift Valley Children’s Village (RVCV). Our efforts have included hiring an additional Social Worker, bringing on a part-time Child Psychologist, developing more cohesive systems for communication, and ensuring that all of RVCV’s caretakers have access to continued training.

While we build out new avenues of mental health support at RVCV, we also want to ensure that all children in our catchment area are leading happy, healthy lives. In order to benefit as many children as possible, TCF conducts mental health trainings for the teachers at all three of our partner schools.

At our most recent training, a psychologist from the Arusha Mental Health Center guided our teachers through recognizing and understanding anxiety, depression, panic disorder, and trauma amongst children. Not only does this awareness help teams to better identify students in need of support, but it gives teachers a more compassionate understanding of the experiences of their students.

While we increase awareness, we also want to ensure we are delivering care to students in need. At the training, we were able to formalize the system in which teachers report any cases of concern to TCF’s health team so that we can ensure appropriate and timely follow-up for each child.

As we work to de-stigmatize conversations around mental health and empower those in need of support, we are grateful to have such a dedicated team who are passionate about meeting the needs of the children in our community.