MSc Humanitarian Intervention

Overview

This ground-breaking MSc course offers online training for people working in humanitarian organisations, wherever they are in the world.

Our distance learning course is aimed at people who are currently or hope to be, engaged in humanitarian work in any country and who want the skills and knowledge to offer psychosocial support.

This involves helping people to maintain their positive psychological development in the face of challenges - often traumatic - being posed by their social environment.

Once you have completed this course you will be able to support others within your organisation, whether or not you are part of an established human resources department.

As well as 'helping the helpers', you will be equipped to offer direct psychosocial guidance to people who have suffered, or who continue to suffer, from the effects of a natural or man-made catastrophe such as famine, flood, epidemic or war.

What you will learn

This MSc course introduces you to different types of intervention and the skills to put them into practice.

These include engagement, development of trust, facilitation, enabling and the identification of a process by which information can be accessed, shared and evaluated.

You will learn how to consult with other members of your team, offering them appropriate psychosocial support and stress management strategies.

You will also be given the skills to develop psychosocial support programmes within the organisation, perhaps through its HR department.

The course includes key modules on how to offer mental support to beneficiaries outside the organisation - that is, people who have suffered directly from natural or man-made disasters.

The MSc can be completed in a year full-time or two to three years part-time, and involves passing six modules.

These include the two conceptual core modules - Psychological Aspects of Humanitarian Intervention, and Assessing, Planning and Intervening During and After Disaster and Conflict.

We consistently review our courses to ensure we are up to date with industry changes and requirements from our graduates. As a result, our modules are subject to change. 

Optional modules include Foundation Counselling Skills, Intercultural Counselling Practice and Processes and Individual Group and Organisational support for IDPs and Refugees. You will also complete two core modules involving research and a dissertation.

What you require

A degree in Psychology, Social Work, Medicine and other related subjects and possibly some experience (also as a volunteer) in the humanitarian, community sector.