Our Work

Common threads healing circles

Our approach blends traditions of group sewing with evidence-based trauma therapy, including psycho-education, somatic work, coping skills, and art therapy activities. The sewing circle provides mutual support, emotional safety, and enables the complex work of trauma recovery.

Participants are able to disclose atrocities, and share their experiences of survival. They build community and reclaim their futures.

In collaboration with local partners, we train local practitioners who adapt and implement the Common Threads model for the communities they serve.

We have currently active programs in Ecuador, Nepal, New York City, and Seattle.

Learn more about our approach.

Managing Stress and trauma

During times of crisis, mental health workers are often on the frontlines. Only when staff have the skills to prioritize their own coping and address secondary trauma can they be available for helping others. Our Managing Stress and Trauma programs use creative tools for self care to support these first responders.

We are currently working with partners in Poland and Ukraine who serve those displaced by the war. The staff are social care professionals, psychologists, lawyers and psychosocial workers who provide multidimensional support to survivors. Most of these specialists are refugees themselves.

building local capacities

Once local partners have developed a high level of expertise in facilitating the intervention, they become CTP Centers of Excellence, fully embedding the program in their regular service provision and training others in their region.

The Sajha Dhago program in Nepal is Common Threads’ inaugural Center of Excellence. The team in Nepal has developed a high level of expertise and now has full leadership of the program.

In 2022, they formed an independent non-profit, and continue to facilitate healing circles.