ACUPUNCTURISTS WITHOUT BORDERS

AWB has been providing trauma healing acupuncture services in Israel and the West Bank for the past four years. The one thing that all people in this land share is trauma, from war, displacement, dispossession of land, and violent persecution. Unresolved trauma can often be passed from generation to generation, and is an obstacle to individual, community and national wellbeing. Trauma keeps fear alive and may prevent human contact, diminishing the chances for co-existence and peace.

Acupuncture helps prevent and resolve trauma by “resetting” the nervous system, enabling us to move beyond fear, to think rationally and cooperatively. AWB offers acupuncture treatment to everyone regardless of tribal, religious or political affiliation.

Since 2014, AWB has
• Trained over 120 Jewish and Arab-Israeli acupuncturists and medical workers
• Helped develop AWB Israel as a non-profit organization, dedicated to providing
treatment, training and education to Israelis and Palestinians about the benefits of
trauma healing
• Provided over 10,000 treatments in Palestinian villages, Jewish settlements, for
displaced Sudanese refugees, for Holocaust survivors, and Israeli soldiers

The Military Stress Recovery Project (MSRP) provides free acupuncture treatments for veterans, active military personnel, reservists and their families.
The MSRP began in 2006 with a pilot clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently includes over 30 AWB-affiliated clinics across the country.

AWB created the MSRP program during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because so many soldiers and veterans were suffering the effects of trauma without effective treatment within the military medical system. Pharmacological treatments for post-traumatic stress (PTS) have been shown to be relatively ineffective and can create chemical dependence with devastating side effects, including increased suicide rates. AWB has pioneered the use of acupuncture as a safe, effective, non-pharmacological therapy for returning soldiers that fills this trauma treatment gap.

Clients at MSRP clinics experience benefits such as a full night’s sleep for the first time in years and fewer bad dreams. They experience improved mental clarity, less anxiety and depression and a renewed interest in social relationships and community. Many subsequently report that they are able to reduce medication dosages for a wide variety of symptoms that are co-morbid with stress and post-traumatic stress, including pain and insomnia.

AWB’s Community Service Clinic Program grew out of its Military Stress Recovery Program, which offers treatments for stress and trauma to veterans, active military and their families. Each community service clinic affiliated with AWB serves a unique audience within the local community, including populations such as: elders, people with limited access to healthcare and refugees.

Acupuncturists Without Borders’ Nepal program has been in operation since 2009. Currently, AWB’s focus is on organizations and programs in the following areas:

- Trafficking of women and girls, and children
- Women and children victims of domestic violence
- Empowerment of women with substance addiction
- Disaster response preparedness and post trauma treatments

United States-Mexico Border:
Between January, 2019 and March, 2020, AWB-trained acupuncturists took five service trips to Brownsville, Texas-Matamoros, Mexico, offering free acupuncture treatments for migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and community first responder volunteers at the International Bridge that connects the two cities. These treatments were offered in border encampments to alleviate pain and traumatic stress experienced by people affected by violence, poverty, torture, and displacement from their countries of origin. AWB also treated community volunteers who often suffer secondary trauma as a result of extremely stressful support work with migrant communities.

AWB collaborates with community first responder organizations, including Las Angry Tias & Abuelas of the Rio Grand Valley, Team Brownsville, and Catholic Charities, that assist asylum seekers with food, water, clothes, transportation assistance, shelter, medicine, and toiletries. AWB’s provides a critical missing element: Trauma-informed mental health support for migrant families and volunteers who suffer significant levels of pain and post-traumatic stress.

AWB’s direct service work was paused in March 2020 due to CoVid, and is expected to resume in the spring-summer of 2021. AWB is seeking funding for this program, which includes setting up “mobile clinic” treatment teams to provide acupuncture treatments, as well as training for local health professionals on the Mexico side of the border to expand service capacity and a sustainable service program.

International:
Since May 2016, AWB has offered trauma-healing treatments in Greece where over 60,000 people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries live in refugee camps. Many refugees experience significant trauma from war, displacement, dangerous migration, and loss of friends and family. Immigrating to EU countries like Germany is not a possibility for them because they migrated to Greece after the border to the rest of Europe was closed in March 2016. They are stranded in Greece until they receive asylum there, or are likely to be deported back to the Middle East. Greece cannot provide an economic future for them (many Greeks have no work) and deportation can mean death.

AWB is the first organization that we know of that has brought trauma reduction acupuncture to refugee camps in Greece. Our mission is to create as much “capacity” as possible, which is why we are now training Greek acupuncturists to offer treatments. In October and December 2016, AWB trained 20 Greek practitioners who are working in teams to offer treatments twice weekly at the Ritsona and Oinyfyta camps. Since May 2016 AWB has sent eight volunteer teams to Greece. In early 2021, AWB was officially incorporated as an NGO in Greece and is in the process of starting a community acupuncture clinic in the city of Athens focusing on treating refugees and residents of Athens. From there, AWB hopes to expand capacity to other parts of Greece and Europe where refugee and migrant communities are located and whose access to mental health services is limited.

Moving forward, AWB intends to:

- Create new refugee support clinics in the US. We especially intent to build on our trauma-relief project at the Texas/Mexico border in Brownsville, TX, to treat migrants, asylum seekers and community first responders.
- Continue direct service in the refugee camps while maintaining biosafety protocols in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
- Train more Greek acupuncturists to provide treatments. We are supporting them by offering training, transportation and supply stipends.
- Train acupuncturists in European countries such as Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands who are working with over 1 million resettling refugees.

In 2010 Haiti was hit with a huge earthquake that flattened the capital city of Port-au-Prince, as well as many surrounding areas. Following generations of political, environmental and economic hardship in the country, the earthquake disaster devastated this little country.
Acupuncturists from around the United States begged AWB to mount a relief effort in Haiti. With support from private sponsors and relief coordinators, as well as Mayway and other organizational sponsors, AWB began sending relief teams to Haiti. In 2010 eight relief teams offered approximately 5,000 treatments. Subsequently AWB provided three trainings for a total of 120 local health care practitioners.

Currently AWB trainees in Haiti offer six weekly clinics, and AWB provides ongoing support for a part-time local clinic coordinator. AWB volunteers have offered over 30,000 life-giving treatments in Haiti, and there is demand by local health care practitioners for an additional training if funds can be raised.