Psycho-Social Recovery of the Residents in the Refugee Community Spionica

The refugee community Spionica in the municipality of Srebrenik was built by the Swedish aid organization SIDA and Norwegian people's aid-NPA, which monitored and maintained the settlement during the following two years.
There are 350 residents in the settlement.

At first, during the activity planning, we observed the needs of the residents and categorized the problems that they faced:
- A high level of psycho-social problems with the following symptoms: depression, anxiety, mood swings, reality denial and living in the past
- Lack of motivation for active participation in social life with the following symptoms: withdrawal, distrust, lack of will, the lack of self respect
- Communication disorder with the following symptoms: conflict among families, between parents and children, and distorted neighborly relations.

Based on the described problems, the Vive Žene team has established the goals for the residents:
- Motivation of the entire community, which means the encouragement of the community residents to actively participate in the planning of their future
- Providing support in the building of the infrastructure
- Identification of problems and their solutions.

In that way, the conditions for the work with women have been created, more specifically social support, therapeutic work with groups of senior women and therapeutic work with the group of adolescents, as well as the pedagogical work with school aged children.