Focusing Initiatives International

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United States
Corvallis, OR
Focusing Initiatives International

We promote social change by supporting people and communities to develop wellness, inner healing, and creative solutions to local problems.

Community wellness is based on a public health approach with two assumptions. First, most illnesses are preventable, including various types of mental illness. Second, the community itself contains many solutions to its own health needs and already has many techniques to encourage for resilience and wellness. With minimal training, people can be taught to contact their inner source of resilience.

With the right kind of attention, healing begins. We teach these skills. Culturally-specific strategies enhance the community’s ability to recover. To tap into this cultural wisdom, we identify those in the community who are already recovering and thriving. We learn from them, adopt and adapt strategies, and help them share their experiences with others in their community. Through our process, community members:
* find the resilience to address problems
* improve community connections
* change how they face the stresses of daily life
* overcome creative blocks
* explore spiritual connections in their inner lives
* discover how they can be part of positive changes in the world

To foster resilience and community engagement, Focusing International:
*Offers workshops on human development, including psychosocial wellness, healing from trauma, and coping with and reducing stress. We promote locally existing positive coping skills and wellness practices to create just and peaceful communities.
*Mentors trainers throughout the world in Focusing and other processes that aid in self-reflection, communication and greater listening skills, so that they can become more effective leaders and promote wellness, emotional safety, and human development in their own communities.
*Provides technical assistance to individuals and organizations to help them design, establish, fund, and operate local programs and projects to promote human development. Outcomes:
The success of our programs has been evaluated by two independent organizations and includes:
*Reduced violence in families and schools
*Improvements in wellbeing and physical health
*Reduced reliance on over-the-counter and illegal drugs and alcohol
*Increased capacity to facilitate peace and reconciliation

07/10/2026

Today, FII is launching a new self-paced course! Self Care: A Holistic Approach

This community wellness and psychosocial self-care course will show you how the body carries wisdom, emotion, and insight.

Through the simple, evidence-based self-care practices in this course, you can grow healthier connections with yourself and others.

Gratitude is such a powerful tool for personal wellness. Psychologists have studied gratitude practices and found that people who practice gratitude show greater resilience in the face of trauma and hardship long-term.

Find out how holistic self-care practices can improve your wellbeing, and try our course at https://courses.psychosocialsupport.org/courses/self-care-a-holistic-approach--00000001-000b-4489-52b1-000000013e9c/salespage

06/25/2026

Through our project, Brighter Tomorrow in Peshawar, we give child laborers and vulnerable children an education.

During a lesson at Brighter Tomorrow on animals and birds, many children asked whether the animals they were learning about were real or mythical. They expressed a strong desire to see these animals if they truly existed. For most of the children, direct exposure to wildlife was extremely limited.

Recognizing the gap between classroom learning and lived experience, the teachers shared the children’s questions with the program coordinator. Understanding the educational value of experiential learning, the coordinator and digital media coordinator mobilized support from the FSRT directors, who personally contributed funds to cover transportation, refreshments, rides, and lunch for a one-day educational visit to the Peshawar Zoo.

The visit transformed abstract classroom concepts into meaningful experiences, reinforcing learning through observation, dialogue, and reflection. It demonstrated how low-cost community-supported interventions, supported by volunteers and individual donors, can significantly enhance educational outcomes, nurture life skills, and broaden horizons for children from highly marginalized communities.

Read the full story: https://www.brighter2morrow.org/from-classroom-curiosity-to-real-world-learning/

06/23/2026

Resilience is hard to explain. But it is easier to feel. That's the idea behind one of the most memorable activities in Reaching Resilience — the "green stick, dry stick" exercise.
It started with something simple: Pat Omidian would begin her lectures with a dry stick that she would bend a little more with each stressful experience mentioned, until it snapped. Then she'd do the same with a green stick, which bent and bent... and sprang right back.
But when Palestinian psychologist Dr. Mohamed Altawil brought this exercise into his support groups in Gaza, something shifted. People there had often learned to disconnect from their feelings just to survive. Mohamed decided to bring a large number of green sticks and dry sticks to his support groups so that each person could internalize the difference.
What had been an intellectual talking point became something participants could carry in their bodies, a felt memory of their own flexibility and their own capacity for resilience.
This is what Reaching Resilience captures so well: real, living tools that communities reshape to fit their own culture and context, proof that healing knowledge grows richer the more it's shared.
Get your copy of Reaching Resilience and explore the activities transforming community wellness work around the world.
🔗 https://www.amazon.com/Reaching-Resilience-Training-Community-Wellness/dp/1976431964

06/17/2026

Meet Wajid Syed, Director of our Brighter Tomorrow Project in Peshawar, Pakistan.
He is a Focusing trainer and has been active in teaching psychosocial wellness and Focusing in refugee camps and with aid agencies in western Pakistan since 2006. He adapts what he learns to local cultures and looks for ways to expand programming. He worked with UNWomen for a number of years as a trainer and social worker.
One of the most terrifying events to occur in Peshawar Pakistan occurred in 2014, when armed terrorists stormed the Army Public-school, killing 150 people, including 134 students. Wajid tells us how he used deep listening, a basic Psychological First Aid Skill to support two people in the aftermath of this traumatic event.
Read more: https://psychosocialsupport.org/deep-listening-allows-healing/

06/15/2026

Drop-in Focusing Foundations ~ Designed for Beginners!

New to focusing? Looking for a space to practice exploring your inner landscapes?

Join us for Beginning Focusing Bits! Happening every Thursday starting at 11 am (Pacific) for FREE

06/13/2026

Leading Without Authority: Meet Dr. Chris Slaughter, Managing Director, FII

Chris' approach to leadership challenges a simple assumption: that influence comes from position. Chris doesn't believe in leading from the top down. His philosophy? "Leading from below."

Having spent 10 years in the Army and earning a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, he's proven that true influence comes from listening and building buy-in rather than relying on title and authority. Now, as we deepen our commitment to sociocracy, Chris is guiding us toward a model where power- and the responsibility that comes with it- is distributed to everyone.

"When we flatten the hierarchy," Chris notes, "we also flatten and distribute the responsibility."

While he's shared much about this vision, the full depth of his approach- from how to handle disagreement constructively to why "good enough" often beats perfectionism- offers a roadmap for anyone looking to build a truly collaborative culture.

Discover the full story. Read his interview by Anna Willman to see exactly how he translates these concepts into daily practice and what he sees as the key to making sociocracy work for us. https://lnkd.in/eWdM_Jq6

Here's to building a better future, together.

06/10/2026

What if the most powerful thing a humanitarian worker can do is stop talking and start listening?
In July 2014, our founder arrived in Liberia as Ebola was tearing through communities faster than anyone could contain it. Clinics were closing. Treatment centers were turning people away. Military enforcement was backfiring.
So instead of telling communities what to do — the team went in with three simple questions.
What do you need me to know?
What do you want to know from me?
What might you as a community do to stay safe?
What happened next was remarkable. Communities identified their own solutions. Members who had already figured out how to protect themselves became local champions. And Liberia, which had the worst initial surge of any country, became the first to end the outbreak.
This experience is at the heart of everything FII does. We do not arrive as experts but as active listeners. Communities already hold the knowledge, the resilience, and the capacity to heal, they just need the space to access it.
That is what we call transforming the conversation on humanitarian work.
https://psychosocialsupport.org/about/lets-transform-the-conversation-on-humanitarian-work/

06/09/2026

At Focusing Initiatives International, we promote social change by supporting people and communities to develop wellness, inner healing, and creative solutions to local problems.

With minimal training, people can connect with their inner source of resilience. With the right kind of attention, healing begins. We practice these skills.

We humans thrive when physically and emotionally safe. When free to secure our needs and shape our communities in ways that hold meaning and significance for us, we flourish.

We offer workshops on psychosocial wellness, healing from trauma, and coping with and reducing stress. Our Community Wellness approach promotes locally existing positive coping skills and wellness practices to create just and peaceful communities.

For more than 12 years, we have provided mentoring throughout the globe using processes that aid in self-reflection, communication and greater listening skills, to help “grow” more effective leaders and promote wellness, emotional safety, and human development in their communities.

When did you last take the time to truly listen?

Learn to how you can foster wellness in your community
🔗 focusinginternational.org

06/08/2026

Focusing Initiatives International supports those in distress through a variety of community wellness initiatives. Our culturally sensitive, deep listening approach emphasizes building connections and embracing the power of mutual support. This is even more crucial as the whole world is experiencing multiple crises.

As we strive to make our programs available to everyone, regardless of finances, nationality, gender, or age, every donation makes a large difference in so many lives and communities across the globe.

Donate to support our initiatives at https://my.focusinginternational.org/campaigns/focusing-international-donations/

06/05/2026

The journey is more important than the destination

Cammi didn't learn focusing in a therapist's office. Cammi first learned focusing in Sprout Space, a weekly webinar hosted by Pat Omidian, Nina Joy Lawrence, and Huntress Keller during the pandemic.

Through Sprout Space, Art Club, and eventually FII's Community Wellness Focusing Certification course, Cammi lived focusing surrounded by peers as part of a community.

Despite burnout, anxiety and overwhelm, one simple question during a focusing session changed everything for Cammi: "Where do you feel it in your body?"

What emerged was the image of a small, smoldering campfire at their core- a fire that they nearly let go out.

Today, as FII's Communications Coordinator, Cammi brings their community-minded approach to everything they do, and they continue to hold this fire with them everywhere they go.

This story is a reminder that healing doesn't usually happen in isolation. Often healing happens through community.

This community-wellness approach to healing is what Focusing Initiatives International strives to develop and promote.

Follow our page to learn more about our programs, trainings, and the communities we serve.

Read more of Cammi's story: https://focusinginternational.org/focusing-in-community-cammi-finds-their-fire/

Address

Focusing Initiatives International 922 NW Circle Blvd, Unit 160-211
Corvallis, OR
97330

Website

http://focusinginternational.org/

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