Tending the Helper's Fire conferences

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About the Helper's Fire conferences

In March of 2004, after almost two years of planning with experts in the field, Action Without Borders organized a national conference under the title: "Tending the Helper's Fire: Mitigating Trauma and Stress in International Staff and Volunteers." Hosted by Notre Dame University's Kroc Institute, the conference was the first in the United States to bring together human resources professionals, researchers, program directors, and international humanitarian aid workers to examine how different organizations currently provide psychosocial support to their overseas staff, and how they can do so more effectively.

Two major outcomes of Tending the Helper's Fire were the creation of the Psychosocial website as a platform to disseminate practical information about psychosocial support strategies, and the generation of informal working groups who continued to meet regularly to discuss the latest developments in the field.

In May 2008, several participants from the first Helper's Fire organized a second—"Helper's FIre II: Building Resilient Communities for Humanitarian and Development Assistance Field Staff"—hosted by the University of Denver's International Disaster Psychology program. The Helper's Fire II conference report noted that "attention to staff care and support before, during, and after their time in the field and the study of how to improve outcomes in this arena was still relatively new in 2004." In the intervening years, "the notion that effective self-care and management ultimately contributes to the ability of all humanitarian workers to work more effectively and more safely has gained considerable currency."

This page collects takeaways from the two Helper's Fire conferences. We thank Sharon Forrence for sharing the materials from Helper's Fire II.