Renaissance 2 – Civil society and institutions work together for the rights, care and social inclusion of people with mental illness in Burkina Faso – AID 012590/06/2.

This initiative is part of a program to promote mental health and the rights of people with mental illness that CVCS together with its partners started in 2018 in Burkina Faso.

The project intends to develop the strategy implemented with the project concluded in the year 2022 “Renaissance – Social reintegration paths for people with mental illness in Burkina Faso” AID – 011875 co-funded by AICS, and extend it to other areas of the country, strengthening health care for people with mental illness and their reintegration opportunities based on the intervention model of the main partner Association Saint Camille de Lellis of Bobo-Dioulasso (ASCL) which since 2014 has been running a center to welcome, treat and socially reintegrate wandering people with mental illness.

In Burkina Faso, people with mental illness suffer a strong social stigmatization: they are excluded at the family and social level as their condition is attributed to curses or spells and therefore often abandoned to themselves and in situations of vagrancy and extreme vulnerability.

Even at the health level, the phenomenon is neglected, due to a lack of specialized personnel and structures.

The project therefore includes 3 levels of intervention:

1. Strengthening of ASCL therapeutic centers and the skills of health personnel of public health services.

Support activities will be carried out to strengthen the two therapeutic centers of ASCL (Hauts Bassins region) and a more recent one in Ouagadougou (Centre region) through structural interventions such as the construction of a headquarters for the Ouagadougou center and an autonomous residence for patients of the Bobo-Dioulasso center and training activities for 50 health professionals centres to increase patients’ capacity for care and social reintegration. Thanks to these interventions, the therapeutic centers of ASCL will be able to welcome, treat and start social reintegration about 500 people in three years.

In addition, a basic training program on the diagnosis and management of people with mental illness will be carried out to improve the skills of 326 health workers (nurses and doctors) from over 100 health facilities in 9 districts of the Hauts Bassins and Centre regions and for 20 nursing students from the Ecole Nationale de Santé Publique.

2. Social and professional reintegration of people with mental illness.

We will work for the reintegration of patients with mental illness by contacting their families and involving them in training activities aimed at the reintegration of their family members.

The activity of ergotherapy and professional training of the ASCL therapeutic centers will also be developed  through the development of the agricultural activity of the CLER center of Doufiguisso where patients can spend periods learning to work in the agro-zootechnical sector. In addition, professional integration paths will be created  for stabilized patients.

3. Promotion of the rights of people with mental illness  and strengthening coordination and dialogue between CSOs operating in the field of mental health and institutions.

The project will strengthen the cooperation and coordination of civil society actors dealing with the rights and care of people with mental illness and will promote dialogue between them and institutions to address health and social issues in a participatory way.

Sessions and meetings will be held to inform and raise awareness of the population in the area, in villages and neighborhoods, in schools and with young people.

Renaissance – Pathways for the social reintegration of people with mental illness in Burkina Faso – AID 011875

The Renaissance project involved the urban center and suburbs of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city for inhabitants of Burkina Faso, and focused on promoting the rights of people with mental disorders.

Mental health is a very neglected area: people with mental illness are often stigmatized, marginalized, abandoned and imprisoned.

The project therefore wanted to achieve the following objectives:

• Strengthen the  care model promoted by the partner Centre Espérance for the reception, treatment and socio-family reintegration of abandoned people with mental illness;
• Improve the knowledge of the  local population about mental health through field research, training for families and young people for their participation in the management of the problem, community awareness.

The project ended in the year 2022.

Sentiers: Social inclusion paths for minors and young people in Côte d’Ivoire

The project is aimed at minors and young people in conditions of family, social and economic fragility and in conflict with the law of the Bouake and Daloa contexts, with the aim of facilitating their access to basic education, vocational training and educational paths for social reintegration.

The main activities carried out are:

• support  for pre-school and primary training activities  for children from families in severe poverty;
• educational programs for the positive social reintegration of minors and young people in conflict with the law or at risk of marginality and deviance;
• professional training and  accompaniment in employment for young people in conflict with the law, young girls and young women in serious economic difficulty.

Bien vivre chez soi

The project “Bien vivre chez soi – Un avenir pour les jeunes et les familles ivoiriennes” intervenes in the Department of Bouakè, with activities in the Sub-Prefecture of Djébounua and in the Department of Daloa, in the urban context, for the prevention of risky migrations, in particular youth, activating local development processes.  

The territories of intervention are located in the regions that contribute most to poverty in the country, where young people are the dominant group but also the most fragile group, because they come from poor families, often single-parent, without basic education or excluded from vocational paths.

Some of these young people, non-existent for institutions, are attracted by crime which is often a means of raising money to migrate.

In the three years of the project, activities are therefore being carried out to

• promoting basic education and vocational training;
• launch income-generating activities involving young people and women in conditions of marginality;
• prevention of juvenile deviance, also with interventions within the penitentiary facilities for minors of Daloa and Bouake.

Cambiando de Lente: participatory local models of justice and prevention of juvenile delinquency/violence with a restorative approach in Bolivia.

The “Cambiando de Lente” project aims to ensure continuity to the activities promoted by the Italian Cooperation in Bolivia in the framework of an agreement signed between the Ministry of Health, the Autonomous Municipal Government of Cochabamba and AICS, aimed at building a model for the care, treatment and rehabilitation of people with problems related to alcohol and drug consumption in the city of Cochabamba.

As part of this common effort, a Center for Integral Attention for the Family (CAIF) was built, inaugurated and launched, a space that offers prevention, psychological and social diagnosis services, as well as outpatient treatment for people, especially minors, with problems with the consumption of licit and illicit substances.

Gender and intra-family violence, closely linked to these phenomena, represent a real national emergency to which this project intends to respond by promoting an integrated program of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention with particular reference to the use and abuse of alcohol and other psychoactive substances (drugs, tranquilizers, stimulants, inhalants) and related violent manifestations.

Prevention on these issues is of fundamental importance if we take into account that crimes of a sexual nature are the second in terms of incidence, after theft, in the juvenile group and the third offense in the adult group of the country.

The project aims, in particular, to support and strengthen territorial services and policies on integral prevention (primary, secondary, tertiary), promoting dynamics of interinstitutional coordination, capacity building and governance, starting from pilot local experiments of collaboration between local authorities and civil society.

Without replacing the territorial assistance services, this initiative builds around them and the organized civil society present in the territory, a capacity building program focused on strengthening the technical skills  of the operators and managers of these institutions and their networking and coordination, with the aim  of improving the quality of services and increasing the type of offer.

The direct target groups are therefore the technical operators of the departmental and municipal social services, the security operators of the penitentiary institutions for minors, the police officers operating on the territory of the South District 16 of Cochabamba, the operators of the legal attention centers (SLIMs), of the territorial offices of the Defensoría de la Niñez y Adolescencia and the organized civil society that intervenes at the level of the territory in the field of child protection.

The experience of territorial collaboration in the network that the Municipality of Cuneo can boast constitutes an important added value that will be appropriately enhanced through dynamics of technical consultancy, accompaniment, exchange.

Emprendiendo para ser libres: Technical labor training of persons deprived of liberty for social and family reintegration.

The project “Emprendiendo para ser libres” aims to support the family, social and work reintegration of women deprived of liberty (especially young women) of the Centro de Orientación Femenino of Obrajes and young people (18 to 28 years old) detained in the Centro de Reinserción Social para jóvenes of Qalauma.

Persons deprived of liberty need a type of attention that supports their path of social reintegration, during the period of detention and in the period after the exit. To this end, in Bolivia the Administrative Resolution NRO. 095/2018 approved the post-penitentiary attention protocol, developed with the support of CVCS, which establishes a series of responsibilities for the authorities of the penal system, including the duty to involve the PPL, starting from the period of stay in the Penitentiary Centers, in paths articulated on 5 strands: 1. Family reintegration; 2. Strengthening health; 3. Psychosocial strengthening; 4. Job placement; 5. Educational insertion.

The people deprived of liberty present in the Center come from the poorest contexts, especially from the suburbs of the cities of El Alto and La Paz. Many of these people have stopped studying or working. In the process of reintegrating a person previously deprived of liberty, society is one of the key actors; It is therefore important to work on the preconceptions and negative judgments of society. Restorative justice, which animates this project, shows that people are recoverable and can become fully protagonists in their family and social contexts.

In order to contribute to social, family and work reintegration, the activities envisaged in the area of deprivation of liberty are:

• Training on conflict prevention and resolution, responsibility, maternity and parenting orientation: these topics have been identified taking into account the relevance of the family in the reintegration process.
• Auxiliary technical training in bakery, pastry, cooking, leather goods, metalworking, carpentry, crafts, sewing, screen printing and sublimation: giving continuity to the training started in the first phase, technical training will be carried out to strengthen professional skills. Workshops on innovative and ecological production will be conducted, with the aim of encouraging greater creativity in production and diversity in the offer. Finally, technical training is complemented by training on entrepreneurship: the labour market is constantly evolving and people deprived of liberty must acquire the skills to promote themselves, including through the creation of their own productive enterprise.

In the period following release to freedom, the following are envisaged:

• Post-penitentiary orientation and accompaniment in the family and work environment: once released again, persons deprived of liberty are accompanied by social workers and educators in their reintegration process. With families, a restorative approach is developed that promotes the empowerment of the family and the participation of all its members. In the field of employment, they are given guidance so that they can look for a job according to their abilities. In addition, start-up capital and technical guidance are supported for individual and collective productive enterprises of people released from prison.

Shelter Houses: in cases where there is no home or family to return to or return to could represent a risk factor for recidivism, former persons deprived of liberty are housed in the Kantuta and Terpura Houses, two transitional places, where housing, food support and job orientation are provided. These two reception centers are also equipped with production laboratories that allow you to gain work and cooperative experience, even profitable, during the first months of freedom.