Trainer on Art Therapy

Sustainable Peace Foundation (SPF) is an Iraqi feminist Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) striving to build and sustain peace through vertical and horizontal approaches and participatory methods; addressing root causes of tensions and conflicts challenging positive peace in Iraq. SPF strives to achieve this by working on the grassroots level to reinstate and strengthen the lost trust between Iraq’s diverse ethno-religious communities; increase community resilience, empower and building the capacities of the very effected communities so they can mitigate and transform conflicts through dialogue and non-violent means.

SPF strives to achieve these objectives by working with vulnerable groups such as, youth, women and girls, people with special needs and IDPs through developing their capacities to take leadership roles and to actively participate in the peace and reconciliation processes; economically empower communities by offering them vocational trainings and providing them with livelihood means to ensure stability and a dignified living standard.

SPF also strives to engage local authority and security actors with the local communities through advocacy, round table dialogue sessions and developing local peace mechanisms and structures capable to acts as soundboards conveying their communities’ needs and challenges. Another pillar of SPF’s efforts is to support and capacitate Iraq’s civil society for example, SPF provide the technical coordination and the secretariat of Nineveh Peace Forum, which it is a founder.  

SPF also provides consultations for local and international NGOs on peacebuilding and social cohesion programming, such as: context analysis, needs assessments, actor and service mapping etc.

SPF’s focuses on minority protection, but through its Do-no-Harm approach, which ensures that SPF programming and implementation creates cohesion instead of doing harm.

Project Aims

The project aims to establish a sustainable community-led protection mechanism in Baghdeda (also known as Hamdaniyya) that enables trusted local actors to identify, prevent, and respond to protection risks while integrating community-based psychosocial support to restore safety, wellbeing, and social cohesion among trauma-affected Christian populations. 

More specifically, the intervention seeks to shift the community away from fragmented informal coping and silent suffering toward safe, structured, stigma-free, and community-owned protection and psychosocial support systems. It aims to strengthen coping strategies, improve psychological wellbeing, support safe disclosure, and enhance the community’s collective ability to respond to distress and protection concerns, particularly among women, youth, and families affected by conflict, displacement, and recent collective shock events. 

Within this framework, art therapy-based approaches can contribute by creating safe and culturally appropriate spaces for emotional expression, non-verbal processing, healing, peer connection, and resilience-building.

Project Assignment

SPF seeks to engage a qualified Art Therapy Trainer to design and deliver a 3-day training for selected community members, including women leaders, youth mentors, and faith-linked actors, who are being capacitated as Community Protection Focal Points under Activity 1.2. 

The assignment will include the development of a context-appropriate training package and the delivery of a practical 3-day training focused on using art-based and creative therapeutic techniques as supportive tools for community-based psychosocial support, emotional expression, stress reduction, safe group engagement, and healing-oriented activities. The training should equip participants with practical, ethical, and culturally sensitive skills to facilitate basic art-based supportive sessions under expert supervision and within the broader protection and psychosocial support model of the project. This is especially relevant as the project foresees focal points later conducting sessions with survivors under supervision and contributing to safe community healing spaces. 

Terms of Reference

The Art Therapy Trainer will be responsible for designing, preparing, and facilitating a structured 3-day training package that introduces selected community actors to the safe and appropriate use of art-based approaches within community-based psychosocial support and healing processes.

The trainer will:

• review relevant project documents and align the training with the project’s protection and psychosocial support framework;
• develop a detailed 3-day training agenda, session plans, and participant materials;
• deliver participatory training on art therapy-informed approaches for emotional expression, stress relief, group support, and healing;
• ensure the training is culturally grounded, non-clinical where appropriate, trauma-aware, and suitable for community-level application;
• integrate practical exercises that participants can later adapt in supervised healing and support sessions;
• clarify ethical boundaries, role limitations, confidentiality, safeguarding, and referral responsibilities;
• submit a concise final report summarising delivery, participant engagement, and recommendations.

The assignment should support the wider project logic of strengthening community response capacity, improving psychosocial wellbeing, and enabling focal points to contribute to healing-oriented sessions and support processes under technical supervision.  

Key Responsibilities

• Review the project proposal and understand the role of Community Protection Focal Points within the intervention.
• Design a detailed 3-day training agenda and methodology.
• Prepare a complete training package, including presentations, facilitator notes, handouts, and practical exercises.
• Deliver a practical training on art therapy-informed and creative psychosocial support approaches, including:
  • use of drawing, colour, storytelling, symbolic expression, and simple creative exercises for emotional expression;
  • basic group-based art activities for stress reduction and resilience-building;
  • safe facilitation of healing-oriented creative sessions;
  • trauma-aware and survivor-sensitive communication during creative activities;
  • inclusion, participation, and psychological safety in group settings;
  • ethical boundaries, confidentiality, safeguarding, and do-no-harm considerations in creative support work;
  • identifying distress signs and referring participants when specialised support is needed.
• Facilitate role plays, demonstrations, and applied practice.
• Ensure participants understand that art-based support is not a replacement for specialised therapy or case management.
• Coordinate with SPF’s programme and technical team before, during, and after the training.
• Submit a final report with practical recommendations for follow-up coaching.

Deliverables

1. Inception and coordination meeting with SPF.
2. Detailed 3-day training agenda and session design.
3. Complete training package, including:
   • PowerPoint presentations;
   • facilitator guide;
   • participant handouts;
   • practical art-based exercises and group activities;
   • simple materials list for implementation;
   • pre- and post-assessment tools, as requested.
4. Delivery of 3 full training days for selected participants.
5. Training documentation support, including attendance sheet and brief implementation notes.
6. Final training report summarising:
   • training delivered;
   • participant attendance and engagement;
   • key learning outcomes;
   • observations on participant readiness;
   • recommendations for supervised application and follow-up capacity-building.

Required Qualifications

• University degree in psychology, counselling, social work, psychotherapy, expressive arts therapy, fine arts with psychosocial training, or another relevant field.
• Proven experience in designing and facilitating art therapy, expressive arts, or creative psychosocial support trainings.
• Demonstrated experience working with trauma-affected, vulnerable, or conflict-affected populations.
• Strong understanding of psychosocial support, trauma-informed practice, and safe group facilitation.
• Experience using creative and non-verbal methods to support emotional expression, coping, and healing.
• Understanding of confidentiality, safeguarding, consent, and do-no-harm principles.
• Experience developing user-friendly training materials for community-level participants.
• Fluency in Arabic is required and Assyrian (also known as Syriac and Chaldean) is an added advantage.
• Familiarity with Nineveh context, faith-linked actors, and Christian communities in Baghdeda (also known as Hamdaniyya/Qaraqosh is highly desirable. The proposal also indicates that focal points may include women and youth with relevant educational grounding, so the trainer should be able to work effectively with such participant profiles.

Preferred Skills

• Strong facilitation and adult-learning skills.
• Ability to adapt art-based methods to conservative, faith-sensitive, and community-based contexts.
• Ability to explain therapeutic concepts in simple and practical language.
• Experience facilitating group healing sessions or community wellbeing activities.
• Strong interpersonal and mentoring skills.
• Sensitivity to trauma, grief, loss, and collective shock.
• Ability to create psychologically safe learning spaces.
• Good reporting and documentation skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively with programme and technical teams.
• Experience in integrating art-based methods into broader protection or MHPSS programming.

Interested candidates should submit their CV and a cover letter outlining their relevant experience and motivation for the role to hr@sustainablepeacefoundation.org. Please include "Trainer Art Therapy – Baghdeda" in the subject line of your email. Please note applications without cover letters will not be considered and female candidates are highly encouraged to apply. Furthermore, please note this position is subject to signing the contract with the donor.

For more information about the Sustainable Peace Foundation visit our website at www.sustainablepeacefoundation.org.