I recently came back from a trip to Thailand where I was providing information to staff at an orphanage/school on how to be trauma informed. I have done international volunteer work in the past and have learned what to do and what not to do. Volunteer trips where you are focused on just hanging out in an orphanage or teaching English for three months in an orphanage can actually be harmful for them. People (and I used to) often go into these experiences thinking that just because they are showing love or having fun, the child is benefiting. What we are actually doing is showing love, but then taking it away again. Ultimately, we are abandoning children who have already experienced being abandoned.
Unfortunately, I have done many volunteering trips the wrong way. I know more now, so I am trying to do better. When I went to Thailand, the focus was not on simply playing games and having fun with the individuals in the orphanage, it was about training staff. The best way to help the children in the orphanage was to train the people that will be their constant caregivers. The Foundation for Children is an organization that cares for children (from birth to age 18) who have been abandoned or whose parents can’t take care of them. Because these children have been through trauma (even if they hadn’t been severely neglected or abused, a simple disruption in caregiving can be traumatic), we thought it was important for staff to be trauma informed. However, before we started, I thought it was important to figure out the staff’s motivation for working at the orphanage. What brought them there? What was important to them? What was hard about what they did? How did they cope? I did this using an ACT Matrix.
The ACT Matrix is a concept that was developed by Kevin Polk, Mark Webster and Jarold Hambright. We start by drawing a horizontal line and labeling the left side “away” and right side “towards”. We talk about how people are always moving either towards things or away from things. What you move away from and what you move towards is very individual, it will be different for each person. But the underly premise is “Are you living a life where you are focusing on moving away from unpleasant things, or are you living a life where you are moving toward what is important to you”.
It was amazing to see how people responded to this exercise. Some said that this exercise helped them clarify what was important to them. It is easy to get caught up in doing rote activities and being able to get in touch with your values can be very freeing and therapeutic. It was also good to see what things staff were moving away from, because this helped me see what ways I could support them. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t assuming what their needs were. The ACT Matrix helped me see what was important to staff and what staff valued. It also helped me see what was difficult for staff and what was making their job hard. Both of these things gave valuable insight into how to start teaching the staff about being trauma informed.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where I find out how Thai people are doing it right!