Parents living through conflict, displacement, and humanitarian crises face extraordinary pressures that affect both their own wellbeing and their children’s development.
This webinar brings together global and field-level perspectives to explore how parenting and psychosocial support can be better aligned within humanitarian systems.
Drawing on global experience and implementation research from the Thai–Myanmar border, Ukraine, and Jordan, we will examine what integration looks like in practice: what has worked, what has been challenging, and what this means for programme design and scale.
Date: 26 March 2026
Time: 16:00 – 17:15 SAST | 14:00 – 15:15 UK | 17:00 – 18:15 EAT
This event has passed. Watch the recording here.
Speakers
Dr. Amanda Sim is Assistant Professor at the Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine and a member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University. Her research focuses on co-creating and evaluating mental health and parenting interventions with refugee and war-affected families in low- and middle-income countries, as well as with marginalized communities in Canada. Dr. Sim holds a DPhil in Social Intervention from the University of Oxford and previously worked with the International Rescue Committee, implementing and evaluating child and family programs across Asia and Africa.
Dr. Felicity Brown is a mental health and psychosocial support specialist at UNICEF, working across child protection and health sectors. She provides technical support to the co-development, evaluation, and scaling up of contextually relevant interventions across UNICEF country programming. This includes a focus on caregiver mental health and parenting support, and responding in humanitarian emergencies. Dr. Brown holds a PhD and Masters in Clinical Psychology from the University of Queensland in Australia, and previously worked with War Child in developing, implementing, and evaluating mental health programmes for children and families affected by armed conflict
Dr. Eve Puffer is a global mental health researcher and a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the Pamela and Jack Egan Associate Professor at Duke University and the founding Director of the Duke Center for Global Mental Health. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating integrated community-based interventions to promote child mental health and improve parenting and family functioning. She conducts much of her work in Kenya and conflict-affected settings, such as the Thailand-Myanmar border, and also works with low-resource communities in the United States. Before joining Duke, Dr. Puffer was a research advisor at the International Rescue Committee.
Sydney Tucker is a DPhil Student in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford and the Chief of Research and Evaluation for the Global Hope Groups Collaborative. Her research focuses on innovative approaches to quantitatively evaluate the impact of interventions to improve mental health and protect children in crisis settings globally. Tucker holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from University of California Berkeley, and has led randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe in complex, crisis settings.
Nicole Baldonado is a trauma-certified social worker specializing in capacity building, and the design and implementation of psychosocial support for caregivers and prevention of violence against children in humanitarian crises, including war, forced displacement, orphanhood, and poverty.
As the Director of Programming for the Global Hope Groups Collaborative, she has collaborated with stakeholders from Ukraine, the Middle East, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sudan, India, Latin America, and Afghanistan to co-create, adapt, and implement evidence-based strategies for family strengthening across various crises. She has also served as co-investigator on several pre-post evaluations and randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of the resulting programs, called Hope Groups.
Baldonado has over 25 years of experience living in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Hungary and Poland, where she was displaced with her family, from the war in Ukraine. She has a background in multi-sector collaboration across government, non-profit and grassroots community organizations, and human trafficking prevention on the U.S. statewide level.
Nisreen Hawatmeh is the Founder and Managing Director of SANADAK Orphan Ministry, dedicated to serving orphans and vulnerable children through holistic, trauma-informed care. She also serves as Project Director of Hope Groups Jordan, providing psychological and emotional support to individuals and families affected by trauma and displacement.
With a background in psychological and Christian counseling, Nisreen specialises in family counseling, behavior modification, and trauma-informed care. Nisreen is a certified trainer with Haggai Leadership Training and LAMb International, an Internal Family Systems (IFS) practitioner, and an Ambassador for MENA Without Orphans. In addition, she serves on the Middle East Without Orphans Leadership Team and is the International Coordinator for Orphan Sunday Ministry in Jordan. Nisreen holds a bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from the University of Jordan and brings extensive experience as a senior professional architect. She lives in Amman, Jordan, with her husband Maher Abu Lail and their two children, and is committed to empowering children and families to thrive spiritually, emotionally, and socially.