Somatic Experiencing Humanitarian Response Efforts

Around the world, Somatic Experiencing® practitioners, students, organizers and other volunteers are responding to war, displacement, natural disasters, community violence, and other humanitarian crises.

They are supporting people in their own communities. Working with refugees and displaced families. Supporting humanitarian workers, therapists, educators, and first responders. Translating resources into local languages. Offering workshops, supervision, and practical tools that can help people navigate overwhelming circumstances.

The Somatic Experiencing® Humanitarian Response Committee (SEHRC) exists to connect and strengthen these efforts.

Our vision is a global network of SE Practitioners and students who are ready, supported, and connected to one another—so that when crises occur, the resources of the global SE community can be mobilized in support of locally identified needs.

A Global Community Responding Locally

We believe effective humanitarian response begins with the people who know their communities best.

Rather than arriving with predetermined solutions, SEHRC works to connect local knowledge and leadership with the skills, relationships, and resources of the wider Somatic Experiencing community.

This can mean translating an SE-based resource into a language where few trauma resources are available. It can mean providing interpretation so first responders can participate in a training about nervous system regulation and basic SE tools. It can mean gathering SEPs to share best practices and support one another for specific crisis settings. Or it can mean connecting a community facing a new crisis with practitioners, trainers, volunteers, and organizations able to help.

Our work includes:

• Making SE-informed resources accessible across languages and communities.

• Providing webinars, training, and supervision for practitioners and helpers working in humanitarian and crisis settings.

• Connecting people and resources around locally identified humanitarian needs.

• Supporting peer learning and collaboration among practitioners responding to crises.

• Developing safe, ethical, and culturally responsive approaches to SE-informed humanitarian work.

• Building partnerships with organizations and communities working in crisis-affected settings.

Our approach is grounded in community leadership, collaboration, inclusion, Do No Harm, transparency, and responsiveness. Humanitarian needs change—from the immediate aftermath of a crisis through months and years of recovery—and our work must be able to change with them.

From Ukraine to a Global Humanitarian Network

SEHRC was established in 2023 as a joint initiative of the European Association for Somatic Experiencing (EASE) and Somatic Experiencing International (SEI).

Its development grew in part from lessons learned through the SE Ukraine Task Force, created following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as decades of experience among SE Practitioners responding to natural and human-made disasters around the world.

Those experiences demonstrated something important: extraordinary knowledge, commitment, and generosity already exist throughout the global SE community.

What is often missing is the infrastructure to connect them.

SEHRC is building that infrastructure.

Your Donation Helps Turn Connection Into Action

SEHRC is a community-powered initiative. Donations help us respond when members of the SE community identify a need and ask, “What can we do together?”

Your support can help provide interpretation at live workshops, translate and publish SE-informed resources, support training and supervision, connection for volunteers and practitioners across countries, and provide small grants that enable community members to respond to crises where they live and work.

Every contribution helps strengthen a global network capable of sharing knowledge, mobilizing resources, and supporting people who are bringing trauma-informed care into some of the world's most difficult circumstances.

Together, we can mobilize the resources of the global Somatic Experiencing® community to support trauma healing and resilience in communities affected by crisis around the world.

Current Efforts (Sept 2026)

• Ukraine: since 2023, we have provided xxxxxx
• International Assistance Community: created to address the significant disruption this community has experienced in the past 20 months, we have provided 6 free webinars and xxxx
• Jamaica Hurricane Resilience - initiated in response to Hurricane Melissa in xxxx, we have provided 3 webinars w/xxxxx
• Venezuela Earthquake Response - in response to xxxx
• Nepal Floods - 

Visit the SE Humanitarian Response and SE Support for Ukraine YouTube channels to view more than 100 webinars and SE-based exercises produced by our volunteers since 2022 in 15 languages for crises-affected communities around the world.

Our Impact

• Some statistics since 2022
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• A video or two