My name is Rob Lindsley and I’m a senior program officer at World Education, based out of the Boston office.   I’m the point person for psychosocial programming, which means that I work to minimize the psychological risks faced by vulnerable children in our Asia and Africa programs.  In some cases this means putting together systems that provide counseling and support for children who have been through very difficult circumstances.  For example, children who have been soldiers or children forced into commercial sex work often need support to deal with their pasts before they can begin to take control of their futures.  By linking these children with trained social workers, medical staff, and teachers, World Education’s programming can provide access to resources and people that can support these children as they heal and grow. 

In other cases, however, my work focuses on maximizing the well being of vulnerable children, instead of minimizing the harm caused by their circumstances.  For example, we train teachers in the refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border to better identify signs of distress in children and to use expressive activities in the classroom to help students feel safe. As a result, teachers are  able to focus more on teaching rather than managin the classroom, and students  feel secure enough in their new environment to learn and thrive.

So that’s a quick snapshot of the kind of work I do here at World Education.  I’ll be making posts from time to time to tell you about the projects I am working on and the people I meet along the way.  I look forward to sharing more as I go, but in the meantime, please feel free to post comments and questions to me or any of the World Ed bloggers.  We would love to hear from you. 

And thanks again for your involvement in Voices for Vulnerable Children!  Your support really does make a huge difference in the lives of the children our programs assist, as you will no doubt see in the posts to come.  Talk to you all soon, and take care!