Join Dr Beverley Costa to discuss Colleagues Across Borders, a small project of UK-based NGO Pasalo that provides professional support and mentoring via remote platforms for refugees mainly living and working in North Africa. Since leaving their homes, these refugees have trained as psychosocial workers, interpreters and teachers. They may have been doctors, engineers or architects in their previous lives and are now working in a new profession in a new land.
In 2017 Colleagues Across Borders extended the offering of support to interpreters working with refugees and asylum seekers. Interpreters working in the field were matched with pairs of interpreters and psychologists from countries including Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Spain and the UK.
Beverley Costa will share research findings, insights, learning and future plans for the project's different activities.
Dr Beverley Costa, a psychotherapist, set up Mothertongue multi-ethnic counselling service, a culturally and linguistically sensitive psychotherapeutic service in 2000. She founded The Pasalo Project in 2017 to disseminate learning from Mothertongue. Beverley is a Senior Practitioner Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Together with Professor Jean Marc Dewaele, they won the 2013 British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Equality and Diversity Research Award. In the same year, Beverley established “Colleagues Across Borders”, a project in which professional mental health workers offer peer support, pro bono and via remote platforms, to refugee psychosocial workers and interpreters based in North Africa. Her book Other Tongues - Psychological Therapies in a Multilingual World will be published in 2020.
For all inquiries, please contact donata.puntil@kcl.ac.uk.