ATOP Meaningfulworld Humanitarian Outreach Certificate Project to Romania:

Ancestral Healing and Meaning-Making

Utilizing the Biopsychosocial and Eco-Spiritual Model Training

Pre-press release, Sept 2011

Written by Georgiana Sofletea

While Romania has a long history of oppressive rule by unjust empires, the massive traumatic impact felt by the people currently living in Romania began in the 20^th century. Both World Wars took an immense toll on the Romanian population, with the number of combined deaths and collateral victims reaching almost 2 million losses. After the World Wars Romania was dismembered, and it underwent a territorial restructuring that forced the deportation and relocation of many people. What followed was the oppressive and unforgiving Communist regime, decapitating the country’s political, military, religious, spiritual, business, and intellectual elite. This was a veritable genocide, with many people killed, taken to prison and tortured, pushed into forced labor, and brainwashed and turned against one another. While official reports state there were 350,000 victims of the communist regime in Romania, other sources are claiming that there were 2–3 million victims. Currently generational trauma is evident in the high rate of imprisonment, widespread alcoholism, high rate of domestic violence, and high rate of chronic medical, and possibly mental, illnesses.

Our organization, the Association for Trauma Outreach & Prevention (ATOP) of Meaningfulworld, a New York–based international humanitarian charitable organization (501 (c)(3)) affiliated with the Department of Public Information of the United Nations, is devoted to fostering a just, peaceful, and meaningful world. It has collaborated with many organizations to bring rehabilitation programs to more than 29 humanitarian empowerment, educational, and rehabilitation programs around the world, in locations such as Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Our mission in Bucharest, Romania, will focus on Ancestral Healing and Meaning-Making. We are collaborating with Mr. Aurel Mocanu, the Chemarea Sufletului Center, the Spiru Haret University, the Catedra de Psihologie Universitate Lucian Blaga din Sibiu, as well as the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian community in Romania. We will be working with a wide variety of professionals who are passionate about self-healing before healing others, who wish to learn the Biopsychosocial and Eco-Spiritual Modeland heal the many Romanians who are suffering from generational trauma. We have the experience, expertise, the passion, and the commitment to make a difference. The ATOP team members who will travel to Romania are: Dr. Ani Kalayjian, Founder and President of ATOP, who has devoted her life to bringing healing to those who have survived the devastation of disasters; and Georgiana Sofletea, Meaningfulworld Intern, Counseling Psychology Masters student at Teachers College of Columbia University in New York City, who has a strong interest in trauma prevention and disaster rehabilitation and is originally from Romania.

Our goals are to teach professionals ancestral healing, peace-building, meaning-making, and forgiveness so that together we can help the Romanian people heal their emotional and psychospiritual wounds, which have resulted from years of communist oppression, conflict, poverty, discrimination, and displacement. This process will be based on Dr. Kalayjian’s CD From War to Peace: Transforming Generational Trauma into Healing. We aim to help people understand the impact of the past on our present through psycho-education, healing groups, and mind-body-eco-spirit integrative modalities. We will train psychologists, social workers, nurses, and legal and spiritual practitioners. This helps create empowered, centered, and healthy communities that are able to transform generationally transmitted trauma by cultivating a new worldview. Furthermore, we wish to foster dialogue for conflict transformation and peace-building through practicing forgiveness.

We need your passion and volunteer spirit! Come spend two weeks to make a difference in your life as well as in the lives of hundreds of people. Your generous tax-deductible donations are vital to make this ATOP of Meaningfulworld humanitarian outreach project a success. Our first team will depart September 27, 2011. Tax-deductible donations can be made via check made out to ATOP, or PayPal (visit www.meaningfulworld.com for more details). Kindly mail your check out to ATOP, 135 Cedar St, Cliffside Park, NJ, 07010. Those in Romania kindly visit: http://www.chemareasufletului.ro, http://www.salutbucuresti.ro/planoras/swf_map.htm?-8531&-7960