Rita Manninen, CVT volunteer client services coordinator, comments on her many years' experience as a CVT volunteer, helping survivors rebuild their lives and volunteers discover the rewards of helping in that process.

A brief look back at the founding of the Center for Victims of Torture.

In honor of National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, we’re sharing this article that was originally published in our Storycloth newsletter in November 2014. Increasingly, our staff in Jordan is seeing children and young people who need mental health and physical therapy care to cope with their traumatic experiences. Now, more than a third of our clients in Jordan are under the age of 18. To help heal these young survivors, the counseling and physical therapy staff developed ten-week joint physical therapy/counseling groups that provide age-appropriate activities.

Asylum and refugee officers are making decisions that can have serious consequences. My job is to help them understand what torture survivors have experienced so that they, in turn, can be sensitive to interviewing torture survivors while making wise and informed decisions.

Many may not be ready to tell their story in front of a truth commission or international tribunal—some may never be ready. They may not even be ready to tell their story confidentially to a clinician to begin the process of healing. But if and when they are ready, the choice should be their own. The international community, governments and non-governmental organizations alike, should be there to offer support and expertise. The truth that must emerge must be the survivor’s own.

CVT Research Associate, Jennifer Esala, Ph.D, answers key questions on monitoring and evaluation and how it supports program development.

Since 2011, an estimated 200,000 Syrians have been killed and over 11 million have been displaced. As CVT supports the #WithSyria campaign to turn the lights back on for Syria, we also support efforts to shine a greater light on the abuses and atrocities that have been committed by all sides of the conflict, including the Assad regime, and bring perpetrators to justice.

When I think of International Women’s Day, I think of the women we see every day here at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) in our treatment programs in the U.S., Jordan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and soon, Uganda. Around the world, the numbers of refugees and displaced people are growing, and many of the women we serve at CVT are refugees.