SRINAGAR: An online workshop on psychosocial counselling was held at the University of Kashmir.
The day-long workshop titled “Guidance for psychosocial couselling and Covid Helper Skills’ was jointly organised by Mahatma Gandhi National Council of Rural Education (MGNCRE) and KU’s office of National Service Scheme for NSS program officers of Kashmir division to help them understand the challenges faced by student volunteers and program officers in reaching out to help the Covid19 victims.
Resource persons Dr Pallavi Kaul and Dr Priyavart Sharma from MGNCRE said the
workshop intended to educate participants on how they can help volunteers to integrate psychosocial support skills into their services when they come in contact with infected people during the pandemic.
Participants from different colleges of Kashmir shared their first-hand experiences and highlighted some major issues related to Covid19, including mental stress, social stigma, misinformation, fear of vaccination and lack of proper services with medical settings.
“We must channelise our individual efforts in the right direction for better outcomes,” Dr Kaul said, expressing concern over what she called wastage of resources in absence of coordination between individual efforts.
Dr Kaul called for devising strategies for equitable distribution of services.
In her presentation, she reiterated the importance of her ministry’s initiative ‘each one reach one’.
Coordinator NSS Dr Mussvir Ahmad highlighted aims and objectives of the workshop, which he said intended to equip the NSS program officers with skills on Covid19 management through volunteerism.