MSc Humanitarian Intervention by Distance Learning draft

Program Overview

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This ground-breaking MSc course offers online training for people working in humanitarian organisations, wherever they are in the world.

Our distance learning course is aimed at people who are currently, or hope to be, engaged in humanitarian work in any country and who want the skills and knowledge to offer psychosocial support.

This involves helping people to maintain their positive psychological development in the face of challenges - often traumatic - being posed by their social environment.

Once you have completed this course you will be able to support others within your organisation, whether or not you are part of an established human resources department.

As well as 'helping the helpers', you will be equipped to offer direct psychosocial guidance to people who have suffered, or who continue to suffer, from the effects of a natural or man-made catastrophe such as famine, flood, epidemic or war.

To support humanitarian and healthcare practitioners' mental wellbeing during the pandemic, the MSc Humanitarian Interventions Distance Learning course has put together a

wellbeing portal

bringing together a range of internal and external resources for support.

As part of the portal the course is also putting together a webinar series with the participation of our current students and alumni, to offer live sessions on topics relating to mental wellbeing. These contributions to the webinars foster students' professional development and enhance their experience and competence in the field.

Get in touch with the Programme Leader Lucia: L.Berdondini@uel.ac.uk

Program Outline

This MSc course introduces you to different types of intervention and the skills to put them into practice.

These include engagement, development of trust, facilitation, enabling and the identification of a process by which information can be accessed, shared and evaluated.

You will learn how to consult with other members of your team, offering them appropriate psychosocial support and stress management strategies.

You will also be given the skills to develop psychosocial support programmes within the organisation, perhaps through its HR department.

The course includes key modules on how to offer mental support to beneficiaries outside the organisation - that is, people who have suffered directly from natural or man-made disasters.

The MSc can be completed in a year full-time or two to three years part-time, and involves passing six modules.

These include the two conceptual core modules - Psychological Aspects of Humanitarian Intervention, and Assessing, Planning and Intervening During and After Disaster and Conflict.

We consistently review our courses to ensure we are up to date with industry changes and requirements from our graduates. As a result, our modules are subject to change.

Optional modules include Foundation Counselling Skills, Intercultural Counselling Practice and Processes and Individual Group and Organisational support for IDPs and Refugees. You will also complete two core modules involving research and a dissertation.

You will have support throughout the course from your contact with the course lecturers as well as your colleagues. Although the course is delivered by distance learning, you will still feel very much part of our community.

Almost all our students are working in the field and you can stay in contact with each other through our online forum - an important means of sharing ideas and experiences.

Learning materials such as readings, slides and recorded lectures will be uploaded, so you can listen or watch whenever you have time.

Your two full-time lecturers are highly experienced in both the theory and practice of this subject. They are also flexible and generous with their time and available to students online.

This course is ideal for you whether you are working for a small organisation without a specialised psychosocial unit or you are already in HR doing general tasks but want to specialise in psychosocial support.

Or you might be working in a medical department and want to add another element to your portfolio.

For example, we had a students in South Sudan, Nigeria and more. In fact, one of our students last year had to put off his dissertation because he was having to work in his organisation as the Chief Psychological Support Officer within the Ebola crisis operation.

We will assess each module individually and, except for the last two research modules, it may be an essay, a reflective critique of a piece of consultation or a portfolio including methods and critiques of the ways students facilitate their own and others' wellbeing and resilience.

For the Research 1 module students will need to submit a research proposal and for Research 2, a draft journal article based on the research undertaken.