Our Programs
Community Based Psychosocial Support
At the heart of Anar for Empowerment and Psychosocial Support is the Community-Based Psychosocial Support Program, which promotes the psychological and social well-being of Palestinian children and communities affected by violence and oppression. The program adopts a participatory and culturally grounded approach that empowers individuals and local groups to lead psychosocial accompaniment within their own communities. Rather than relying on external interventions, Anar strengthens sustainable, community-led support systems that foster resilience, collective healing, and social cohesion. Through awareness, mentorship, and creative engagement, including arts, play, and performance, children and caregivers are provided with safe and meaningful outlets to express themselves, build a shared space, and strengthen a collective voice. In this way, communities move from being recipients of aid to active partners in recovery, reinforcing natural support networks and helping break cycles of trauma.
The program delivers a comprehensive set of integrated activities, including community support circles, individual and group counseling for children, adolescents, and caregivers, psychosocial and psychoeducation workshops, and structured play and creative sessions. In parallel, the program ensures that individuals with more complex needs are identified and referred to specialized mental health, protection, and broader humanitarian services. Together, these interventions strengthen well-being, build local capacities, and enable participants to become agents of healing, hope, and positive change within their communities.
Empowerment Program
The Empowerment Program at Anar is a core initiative that strengthens the capacities of adolescents and young people, as well as accompaniment facilitators and frontliners, to effectively respond to the psychosocial and community needs around them. Rooted in the principles of accompaniment, the program emphasizes capacity building, mentorship, coaching, and empowerment as key pathways for sustainable change. It supports the development of innovative, community-based interventions while continuously integrating learning from research, field practice, and community feedback. Through this approach, the program not only enhances the skills and competencies of individuals but also empowers communities as a whole, strengthening their ability to respond to challenges with resilience, ownership, and collective responsibility.
Targeting young people aged 15 to 29 alongside community-based facilitators and frontliners, the program provides a structured and practical learning journey that combines leadership development, psychosocial support, community mobilization, and self-care practices. Through intensive training, accompaniment facilitators are equipped to lead psychosocial support programs and sessions within their communities, including facilitating children and caregivers support circles that help ease the ongoing impact of violence and oppression faced on a daily basis. Participants are accompanied through mentorship and coaching processes that enable them to apply their knowledge in real-life contexts, design and lead initiatives, and support others within their communities. By fostering confidence, critical thinking, and active engagement, the program nurtures agents of change who contribute to stronger social cohesion and more responsive, locally driven support systems, ensuring that empowerment becomes both an individual and collective, sustainable process.
Research Program
Based on applied research and advanced scientific research methods, Anar gathers information and data from the field, through its programs and interventions, to identify best practices and the most impactful applications. This program involves conducting field-relevant scientific research aimed at improving and developing services within Anar. This research integrates leading global practices in psychosocial support with the current realities in Anar’s target areas. The findings of this research are then used to develop the Community-Based Psychosocial Support Program and the Empowerment Program, and to enhance the interventions implemented through them.
This program is a contextual extension of Anar’s programs, aiming to ensure that the methodologies used in fieldwork, as well as the materials and tools developed, stem from the local context and reflect actual community needs and priorities. The program also seeks to align interventions with the local culture of diverse communities in Palestine, thereby enhancing their effectiveness and acceptance. This program works to develop advanced contextual tools, materials, and research that will support the quality, sustainability, and impact of Anar’s work.
