Souriyeh / سوريّة: From ‘victims’ to providers of psychological support

Mental health support for Syrian refugees is an important focus for civil society organizations in Jordan. But over the course of the Syrian conflict, traditional methods of psychological care have begun to lose their effectiveness, pushing Syrian women refugees to instead look for projects that focus on empowering themselves.

For Wafaa al-Ayoubi, a Syrian refugee who arrived to Jordan’s Zaatari camp in 2013, “work is a form of psychological support.” While according to Lara Shahin, head of the Jasmine Project, a small crafts workshop for Syrian refugee women in Amman, “psychological support programs that focus just on counselling sessions are a 100 percent failure.”

Syrian women refugees in Jordan have transformed themselves from victims of war to self-empowered providers of key psychological support to other Syrian refugees—both women and men.

In this Arabic-language report, we meet some of the Syrian women working to support themselves as refugees in Jordan.

This report is part of a series on Syrian women and peacebuilding, produced by Syria Direct with support from the Canadian Embassy in Amman. The views or opinions expressed during the series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Syria Direct.