Facing Trauma: Building the stories of Ezra, Elias, Atid & Satya, Samir & Viktoria

The stories of the six characters poster illustrate the storylines of the six main characters from the toolkit on trauma-informed youth work. The full storylines of the characters can be found in the appendix of the activity bundle. On the left-hand side of the poster, the main characters are shown with a QR code one can scan to listen to their story in different languages.

Other possible topics to discuss for each storyline:

• Blue: neglect, psychologist, loss of a loved one, responsibilities, reading …
• Red: natural disaster, friends, hobbies, refugee shelters …
• Yellow: disasters, siblings, nightmares, secondary trauma, vending on the market, knitting …
• Green: reunification, youth care facilities, refugees, board games, separation …
• Purple: war, singing, social media, seeking shelter, separation from family …

This game is part of the Trauma-Informed Youth Work toolkit, which is designed to create a safe, supportive environment for all participants by acknowledging the impact of trauma on young people and fostering trust and empowerment. By incorporating activities that use indirect methods to explore emotions and behaviours, the toolkit makes sensitive topics more accessible and less intimidating, especially for younger audiences. The teamwork aspects of these activities foster collaboration and support, aligning with trauma-informed principles. This approach promotes healing, resilience, and positive development in every youth engaged, while emphasizing emotional awareness and understanding.

• If you have a lot of energy in the group, you can give one card to each of the children and ask them to line up in the specific order of the storyline. Afterwards, the order is checked by listening to the audio story via the QR code.
• If you want to add a little bit of physical activity to your activity, you can split each group further into ‘storytellers’ and ‘arrangers’. ‘Storytellers’ listen to (a part of) the story, then run to a central area to tell what they heard to the ‘arrangers’. The ‘arrangers’ then run back to their ‘base camp’ and attempt to rearrange the cards based on the information provided.
• If you work with young players, give them the poster "The stories of the five characters" so they can put the cards in the right order while looking at the example.
• Draw 6 squares next to each other on a piece of paper like a comic book. Choose a card (of the storylines) that reminds you of your own story and draw your new story. You could think of a difficulty that you experienced in your life. What happened? How do you succeed to make it better? What was helpful? Did you manage it by yourself? Did you find support from somebody? If your difficulty is not solved yet, you can draw what you would like to happen.

Learn how to sequence events logically.