Attachment

Building Attachment

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Introduction:

Our girls all carry some degree of attachment disorder (definition below):

Attachment Disorder: Children who cannot form healthy emotional bonds due to neglect, inconsistent care and traumatic events that affect trust and social connections

Therefore, we are highly focused on the development of trust based relationships between each girl and an adult. These attachment relationships serve to heal stress and developmental gaps.

Our Approach:

We read up on current research on Attachment to educate ourselves. We developed a concise training course to educate our teams on the front lines. Finally we had the materials translated from English to Chichewa (local language).

The training course was delivered by Elijah (child counselor) in the 3 different locations in early December. The end goal of each training session was to match an adult and a child to start a multi-year journey.

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What Happened?

We were thrilled when we learned that mature married women from each church participated in the training and volunteered to invest in the lives of the girls. The assignment involves intentionally spending time together in order to develop an ongoing relationship. Activities we promote include reading together, taking walks, asking questions, talking about Jesus and discussing the past, present and future.

Elijah will monitor these relationships over time, provide coaching, clean up poor matches, and assess the ongoing impact to each child.

The pictures in this article are from the Chipolopolo family. We wanted a picture of each pair at the beginning of this adventure.

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Results?

Watch this space.

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