Even though “everyday” traumas are a normal part of life, if left undealt with, they can hinder one’s growth as much or more than the “big” life struggles, she says. Mutungi would know. Her conviction is rooted in personal experience that has defined her professional counseling career, both in Uganda and around the world.

She was born in a western Ugandan cattle-keeping community. When she was seven, her father died suddenly on an operating room table. He left her mother with eight young children. Life was difficult, but her mother, though uneducated herself, committed to sending all eight of her children to school, even the six girls. Mutungi says her mother’s resolve was remarkable in a culture that wasn’t supportive of girls’ education.

By the time Mutungi was in secondary school, stories of atrocities committed by the terrorist group the Lord’s Resistance Army began to filter south. Mutungi, in school in southwestern Uganda, says she was never personally in danger because the LRA stayed mostly in northern Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but she did witness the aftermath of the violence.

By the mid-1990s, Mutungi had graduated with a degree in social sciences from Makerere University and was working for the National Council for Children. “I had to visit areas that had been affected by the violence,” she says. “People were living in internally displaced camps and sometimes were missing parts of their bodies from torture or landmines.” The people she met struggled to cope with the aftermath of violence, displacement and a concurrent growing AIDS epidemic.

Driven by her desire to help people heal from trauma, Mutungi returned to Makerere University to earn one of the program’s first master’s degrees in counseling psychology. In Uganda, as in many other countries, counseling is an unusual profession (Mutungi says those who seek counseling are stigmatized as “crazy people”). So instead of working as a clinical psychologist, she worked as a health program manager of Peace Corps Uganda volunteers, many of whom were working with HIV/AIDS patients and in post- conflict communities in northern Uganda.

She saw that the need for helping people work through their struggles went beyond the work she was doing for the Peace Corps, though. Even people without devastating diseases or living in peaceful regions can struggle to manage whatever it is they are dealing with, she says.

Guiding from negativity to ‘positivity’

In light of this, Mutungi realized that healing must begin with the self before it can filter to larger society. Everyone experiences trauma, she says, but the key is learning how to respond.

In 2012, Mutungi left her Peace Corps job and founded , an organization that seeks to foster resilience in individuals and groups through a combination of workshops, trainings and individualized “learning journeys,” a 6-week program in which participants produce a reflective portfolio on a subject of their choice.

Reflective Learning Uganda utilizes a “strengths-based” approach developed by psychologist Tony Ghaye called, also known as PAAR. (Ghaye is a founder of and related organizations in the United Kingdom, Italy and Nigeria; he is a chairman of Mutungi’s organization.). PAAR uses personal reflection and questioning to change negative thoughts into positive ones, a process that helps participants feel more empowered and resilient, Mutungi says.

“Positivity workshops” are particularly helpful in schools, Mutungi says, offering the example of, a headmaster of a rural secondary school who was worried his students lacked the hope necessary to continue their education and pursue “professional” jobs as lawyers, teachers or doctors.

“The headmaster wanted me to talk to the students about the responsibility they have to shape their own destiny,” she says. So she began a series of workshops to help students reflect on their past and ask questions about what they needed to do to change their attitude.

“The students became excited,” she says. “Some of them said they had never thought of themselves as having strength, just problems. The students ended up forming a group called the Positive Energy Group and planting trees as symbols of growth. The trees don’t grow fast, but if you water them, they will eventually grow into big things.”

STAR tools used in workshops

Another tool she uses in her workshops is (STAR) training. Since 2010, Mutungi completed STAR I and II and the first of the two practicums required to become a certified STAR trainer. In her first practicum, Mutungi helped facilitate a STAR training in South Sudan under the guidance of CJP professor . When she finishes her second practicum (at a yet undecided location), she will be qualified to teach STAR I to others.

“STAR is very important because it is a training that raises awareness about trauma at the very deepest personal level,” she said during a 2013 video interview. “While I had done training as a counseling psychologist and counselor at master’s level, I had not had an opportunity to have such an awareness about trauma resilience and how to get over such an experience before.”

Learning experiences such as those offered by the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, STAR and Reflective Learning, says Mutungi, provide a safe space to share stories people never felt able to share before. Participants learn they don’t have to carry their burdens alone and how to turn their struggles into strength.

The -sponsored workshops in July and August introduced the approaches used by 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s for addressing trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and building individual and collective resilience, said STAR lead trainer .

Though the content was condensed and delivered in two- or three-day sessions, the workshops “affirm the power of the integrated STAR curriculum,” Barge said. “When you look at conflict and violence through a trauma lens, it gives people on the ground new perspective and new possibilities.”

Barge facilitated the August training in South Sudan’s capital city, Juba. She was joined by faculty member and two alumni of , (MA ’06) and (MA ’98), both from Kenya. Shiphrah Mutungi, a Ugandan alumnus of 91¶ĚĘÓƵ’s , also facilitated.

The introductory workshops, held in Nairobi in July, were led by Ruto and a 2005 CJP grad, of , with input from CJP administrator .

Having experienced violence . . .

Many of the participants had recently returned to South Sudan, after having fled with their families during a December 2013 attempted military coup and related ethnic violence. This upheaval displaced more than 1 million people. The men in the workshop – almost all were male Foreign Service Nationals – were from a range of professions, including drivers, guards, program managers, office staff, doctors and lawyers.

In the six months when they were displaced, many had similar experiences of “running, refugee camps, and deaths in the family,” one participant explained.

Many also came to the trainings preoccupied by strong feelings of anger and abandonment towards “others they felt had wronged them, such as the political system, the government and their employer,” said Ruto. “Most of them felt that the training would not be sufficient to resolve some of the unmet needs and grievances that had not yet been expressed.”

But after activities and small-group discussions that focused on the impacts of the conflict in their personal and professional lives, workshop participants began to see these events with a new perspective.

Seeing with a new perspective

“They realized that traumatic events are caused by multiple events, especially in a situation of war, and that the evacuation they were focused on might not have been the only traumatic event they were experiencing at the moment,” Ruto said.

One participant noted that learning about the cycles of violence “helps us understand how we keep hurting each other and why the violence/conflict hasn’t ended.”

“As participants learned about more tools and developed more of an understanding of the STAR principles, they became more hopeful about how they could use this training for themselves and their families,” Barge said.

Participants advocated for further exposure of trauma-resilience training beyond the “foreign service national” community served by the USAID-sponsored workshops.

More trainings wished for

“They do not want their children to experience 21-plus years of conflict and violence, and they see that this training could play a real peacebuilding role in the region,” Barge said. “It’s important that USAID supports the development of trauma-informed staff, but the positive reaction of the participants and their recommendations to get this training to more people in South Sudan challenges USAID and CJP to do more.”

Generations of South Sudanese have been affected by two civil wars lasting a total of nearly 40 years, encompassing 1955-1972 and 1983-2005. In 2005, a comprehensive peace agreement was signed. South Sudan voted for independence in January 2011 and was declared a sovereign nation six months later. Inter-ethnic warfare, a large refugee population, and internal unrest are among the young nation’s challenges.

In de-briefing sessions after the workshops, Barge said that (who recently left that role, but stays engaged with South Sudan issues) and other officials expressed optimism about the training. Discussion touched on the potential for longer and more extensive workshops for local and expatriate staffers, as well as STAR trainings for a trauma resource team and USAID employees.

Both Barge and Ruto return to South Sudan in October 2014 to lead follow-up workshops.