Orphans and Vulnerable Children - CRIN

Support Groups

In this activity, you will:

 Introduce the concept of support groups to participants

Facilitator’s notes:

The guardians of OVC, as well as home visitors, will need support for the demanding role they play
in caring for others. At times they too will feel depressed and overburdened by their work in a
traumatised community. One action that home visitors can take to share the weight of their role,
is to link with other home visitors and guardians in their community and create local support groups.
These support groups meet regularly in order for everyone to share their problems, their experiences,
lessons they have learnt and to offer advice and support to those whose work involves the caring and
support of others.

Fieldworkers have noted that those societies where people are traumatised by the HIV/AIDS
epidemic or by wars and conflict, whole communities can become gripped by clinical depression
and become dysfunctional. Groups discussions where people talk about and share their troubles
and, with the guidance of a psychosocial counsellor, are helped to take small steps away from their
depression by making small plans to better their situation and to cope with their lives, can bring people
back to functionality.

In this activity, you will introduce the idea of support groups to the participants, especially as a means
to alleviate depression caused by a range of traumatic experiences. Participants will brainstorm
traits displayed by people who are severely depressed; and then consider ways that they could help
to support such people to cope with their lives.

For this activity you will need:

 Flipchart and markers

To facilitate this activity:

1 Divide participants into small groups of no more than six in a group.
In their groups, participants should come up with a list of signs that could show that someone is
severely depressed. For example, they don’t wash their clothes or they don’t work in the fields.
After about ten minutes, let groups give their answers which you can write up on the flipchart.

2 Then get the groups to discuss ways that a home visitor could mobilise others in a community to
become aware of people who are severely depressed and to plan ways to help them. Remind
participants that a support group is essentially a social structure, and that plans to help others
should primarily be concerned with bringing such a people out of isolation and back into general
community life. After a few minutes, let the groups to put forward their suggestions. Write
these up on the flipchart and allow further discussion of time permits.

Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Unit 2, Module 2 213

30 minutes

Activity 5