About Gratis Center

 

The Staff of Gratis – psychologists and Afghanistan interpreters

The main course of our work from the very foundation of the Center was studying the different psychological aspects of migration and providing psychological support for refugees and asylum seekers on the territory of Russian Federation . Since 1999, our Center started working under the program of the United Nation High Commissionaire for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (UNHCR). As a part of the work under the UNHCR program we conducted numerous studies concerned with the processes of social and cultural adaptation to new conditions during the forced migration. We developed five special training programs for refugees and receiving people to facilitate adaptation and integration of migrants into the new society. The results of the work under UNHCR program were presented in more the fifteen publications including books and bulletins.

 

About Refugees

 

We provide psychological support for refugees from African and Middle East countries, mostly from Afghanistan . According to the UNHCR, there are more than 4500 asylum seekers in Moscow region. Due to the many problems with local governments, they have very poor life conditions and uncertain perspectives for the future. Many of them had physical disabilitiesl and mental illness.

 

About Stuff

 

The head of our Center Soldatova Galina is the professor of Cathedra of Personality Psychology, Psychological Department, Moscow State University . She is a one of the leaders of Russian Ethnopsychology and Psychology of Social Tension. All of our collaborators are graduated psychologists with rich experience in practical and research work. We provide support for adult refugees and their children not only in individual consultations and group trainings, but also in everyday life in refugee's community centers. We work in close collaboration with many educational and charity organizations such as Russian Red Cross, Charity Aid Foundation, United Way - Moscow .

 

About the Project

 

In second half of 2005, we started the development of a new project “Professional Adaptation of Refugees and Asylum Seekers”. Applying MOHO as a theoretical basement, we are planning to conduct a wide investigation of refuges occupational life and its correlations with their life-satisfaction and mental health. After that, we are going to develop special training program for refugees to facilitate their professional adaptation and integration in new occupational life. We realize that this program will be very therapeutic and efficient as our practical experience shows that most of refuges have great problems with occupation in foreign country. We suppose that new occupation could bring them new values and new goals and inspire them to start new life in alien society. Also new occupations could give them a sense of relatedness and let them raise their self-estimation. Working side-by-side with receiving people could lead to more understanding between both refugees and local folk.

 

Contacts

 

If anyone interested in our project, we would be very happy to share our experience in applying MOHO in practice and research work with other institutions.

For further information you could visit our web-site: www.psy-gratis.ru

Also for any questions you could contact:

Galina Soldatova, the head of Center: gratis@relcom.ru

Shlyapnikoff Vladimir, the project assistant: not_all_so_bad@mtu-net.ru .