Empowerment on an eye-to-eye level

In recent times, Germany has seen a big influx of refugees. These are people who are overwhelmed by their present life situation: they have faced traumatic experiences in their home country and therefore had to flee. They have often left their families behind and made difficult journeys to reach Europe. In the new environment, without the necessary language skills, facing the stress of acculturation, staring unemployment in the face; and dealing with the ongoing uncertainty about their lives and where they can now live, they often feel impotent, scared and hopeless. These challenges may manifest themselves as psychological and social problems which cannot be solved by the refugees alone. Furthermore, the psychological stress they undergo can have adverse consequences not only for them but can influence their interactions with others. Unfortunately, only a small group of refugees have access to professional psychological help, often associated with long waiting periods. Our social system is overloaded at this point.

We would like to close this gap by offering them a low-threshold, culture-sensitive, native-language specific psychosocial counselling. Our counselling is aimed at providing stability in the face of crises, reducing stress and offering concrete practical solutions. Ipso's psychosocial counsellors from 17 nations facilitate self-empowerment on an eye-to-eye level. Thus, they enable refugees to take back control of their lives and live it meaningfully.

Through our video-online platform ipso e-care (https://www.ipso-ecare.com), Ipso-counsellors can reach people all over Germany and offer them evidence-based psychosocial counselling.

• Provide Germany-wide availability of professional, culture-oriented, native-speaking psychosocial counselling for refugees either face-to-face or via the video-online platform ipso e-care
• Make refugees feel mentally stable and help them actively integrate into our society
• Support our social and health system through our services

For refugees to integrate into a new environment requires a lot of energy, patience and self-initiative on their part. However, if they are facing psychological problems; and/or are experiencing feelings of impotence, are scared and unmotivated, then the process is hindered and progress is slower. Particularly in young people with a refugee or migration background, mental stability is a very important factor in identity development. Successful integration in turn ensures social cohesion. With your support, Ipso will help refugees re-discover and strengthen their sense of self and self-efficiency. We will help them see meaning in their situation; train them to put their skills and resources to good use thereby restoring in them, a sense of their self-worth. From a medical perspective, it is important to reduce their dependence on medication or resorting to drugs and when necessary, quickly assigning them to treatment for clinical disorders. From a social perspective, it is essential to strengthen dialogue between them and ourselves; reduce domestic violence and prevent ideological radicalization. Therefore your support and our "cultural mediators" will encourage refugees and migrants to integrate into German society quickly and actively. Together, we would be promoting social cohesion through empathy, solidarity and mutual sense of responsibility.

With your support we offer refugees and migrants our psychosocial counselling. In concrete terms, this means that we finance 250 consultancy hours for our clients in our counselling centre in Berlin. We offer consultations in numerous languages (for example Arabic, Kurmanchi, Dari, Farsi, Somali, Swahili, Tigrinya, etc.) as well as psycho-educative support groups. We would like to pay our certified counsellors adequately for this professional and valuable work. A consultation hour costs 40 Euros and this includes the fee for the consultant and for the professional supervision of the consultant.
With your donation, you will support both the trained counsellors by giving them an income, as well as the refugees who will benefit from the counselling.