Blog
Posted on October 13, 2017
© Rozarii Lynch
On Wednesday, October 11, together with Seattle Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Washington honored global philanthropists at a dinner with Bill and Paula Clapp, and the Clapps’ longtime friend and mentor, Nobel Laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus.
In his talk Professor Yunus shared his philosophy on charity, his views on the nature of poverty, and his new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions.
David Wertheimer, director of community and civic engagement at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, welcomed the assembled philanthropists and other distinguished guests. Afterwards, Tony Mestres, President & CEO of Seattle Foundation, gave remarks about the importance of global giving to Seattle Foundation, including observing that in a recent report from Council on Foundations, the Seattle region ranked number two among its community foundation peers across the nation in terms of percentage of total international giving. “I think we should all aim for number one,” he said, drawing a round of applause.
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Posted on September 20, 2017
On September 18th, together with Global Washington, Congressman Adam Smith met with about two dozen members of Washington-based non-profits to discuss issues of concern to the global development community. The meeting was held at the offices of World Relief Seattle in Kent, WA.
Congressman Smith represents Washington’s Ninth Congressional District, which comprises the central Puget Sound region, including parts of King and Pierce Counties.
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Posted on September 14, 2017
Following is a transcript of Global Washington’s conversation with Anne Peterson. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Integrating Mental Health in Humanitarian Response
Editor’s Note: Americares President and CEO Michael J. Nyenhuis participated in a plenary session at the 2017 Concordia Annual Summit in New York (Sept 18-19), on sustaining health services in insecure settings. One aspect of health that Americares has sought to elevate within the global community is recognition and care for the mental and emotional health of people who have been through traumatic events.
Why do you think that mental health hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves? What are the things that are lacking in a robust response?
At Concordia in New York, we’re going to talk about refugees and their ongoing trauma, especially looking at how you integrate mental health treatment across different kinds of programs. Not only is there a need, but we’re able to measure things that we can do that make a difference.
I think that the health world for a long time only thought about physical health. When I think about my own training as a medical doctor, I only had one class on psychiatry, but nothing really on mental and emotional well-being. I think that the first exposure I had to mental health concerns in a global health setting was around HIV. For the people who received this life-threatening diagnosis, we realized we should be dealing with their emotional health and coping abilities, as well.
There are also child soldiers who need mental health support as they work to reintegrate into their communities. And, of course, in war you see post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and as we started to measure it, we would see the difference it made on overall health outcomes. Slowly the global health community began to move from just seeing their work as preventing death, toward improving people’s lives.
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