Division 48 Working Groups Report
Solicited by Gunjan Bansal
The Spirituality and Humanitarian Working Group
Working Group Focus
Real peace always begins within. It is rooted within the process of inner transformation. This transformation evolves through the psychological process of objective or neutral self observation. Through these efforts an individual can support, and promote the collective’s personal sovereignty and then can further evolve to engage in those actions that support national sovereignty as well as sustainability on all levels.
Current Projects and Efforts
We have been evolving a Healing/Support Group for traumatized or physically compromised individuals. This was a project which was initiated earlier in the WG’s 25 year history. The number of participants exceeds 100.
We are renewing website support (until 2026) and updating input for the “VoicesofConscience.org" project and subgroup. The site has approximately 1,000 visits a month from those facing crises of conscience in the context of their lives. We continue to receive queries from different contexts where a voice of conscience has been challenged and we work pro bono to provide support as needed.
The Sustainability project for humanitarian initiatives in Haiti, which has an ongoing paradigm in Hawaii, has expanded into support input for other groups including individuals settling to the US from foreign countries, such as Afghanistan.
The chair of this WG contributed a foundational/mission focused article to The International Psychology Group(Div52) and to the Humanistic Psychologist(Div32). This latter offering expressed four pivotal dimensions for building a peaceful inner being as well as a more harmonious synergistic social milieu. This paradigm continues to be developed for both inner and group/societal work. An article on processes has been submitted to the Newsletter Editor recently.
There is a continuing offering by this WG to undergraduate and graduate academic venues of the textbook on “Dao and Daoist Ideas for Scientists, Humanists, and Practitioners” (Editors: Yueh-Ting Lee and Linda Holt, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2019). Specifically the Chapter 6: "Daoist Psychology: Peace and the Process of Transformation, includes descriptions of various projects of this WG, and their operational paradigms which continue to be utilized by professors in psychology in various Universities. Further details are available.
We continually work on building resiliency with individuals and groups in relation to: ongoing stressful life circumstances, and traumatic episodes for members or associates and their family members. The issues of coping, adaptation and transformation are utilized as overview approaches in addressing these challenges and provide a paradigm of operation for initiating healing on all levels of trauma.
This working group chair invites any member to reach out with any comments, questions or interest in any project or with issues in relation to their own work.
I also serve as a mentor to all those that seek it. Thank you for all YOU do to promote peace. Please contact Steve at 561-371-0412 or peacewk@peacewk.org for further information.
Members:
ML Sicoli; Kevin Harris; Rabbi Barry Silver; Shahbaz Siddiqui; Brian Alston; Rest are non-APA members.
Immigration Working Group
Group Members:
Chair and Contact Information: Stephanie Miodus - Anyone wishing further information or hoping to get involved with the working group can contact Chair Steph Miodus @ stephaniemiodus@gmail.com.
Other members of the Working Group and other individuals from other organizations and their contact information can be found on the attached list.
Division 48 Immigration Working Group Report
The focus of the Immigration Working Group is collaboration among members of the working group, members of other Divisions under the auspices of the Divisions for Social Justice, and community organizations/activists/members in support of undocumented immigrant populations through projects/ideas led by the community organizations. The aim of our current project, “Building Immigration Advocacy Consortia: Advancing Human Rights and Social Justice”, is to collaborate with community organizations to support the implementation of advocacy strategies that were identified during the 2020 CODAPAR project “Collaboration Strategies for Psychologists and Activists to Protect Immigrants from Harm”
(https://www.div17.org/connect---immigration-collaborative-advocacy-report). With funding from the Division 48 Small Grant (awarded in 2021), one of our student teams(Gabriella Martinez and Patricia Obilo-Azandegbe, LPC), mentored by psychologists (Germán A. Cadenas, Ph.D. and Shaznin Daruwalla, Psy.D.) and our leadership team, provided direct support to the Arizona Dream Act Coalition (ADAC) in the implementation of the advocacy strategies. ADAC identified a priority of supporting immigrants in recognizing and identifying when mental health support is needed.Through applying a collaborative advocacy framework (Cadenas et al., 2022), our team supported ADAC with developing an accessible tool with such a metric that then links to resources. The final product (a bookmark) outlines mental health symptoms, as well as strategies and supports to address mental health needs, and links to additional online resources. The bookmark is currently being implemented and disseminated by ADAC.
Reference
Cadenas, G. A., Morrissey, M. B., Miodus, S., Cardenas Bautista, E., Hernández, M., Daruwalla, S., Rami, F., & Hurtado, G. (2022). A model of collaborative immigration advocacy to prevent policy-based trauma and harm. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001330
Stephanie Miodus, M.A., M.Ed. is a fourth-year School Psychology Ph.D. Candidate at Temple University. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, M.A. in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and M.Ed. in School Psychology from Temple University. She serves in American Psychological Association leadership, including on the APAGS Advocacy Coordinating Team, as Division 1 Student Representative, as Division 46 Student Committee Co-Chair, as SPSSI GSC Policy & Applied Work Focus Member-at-Large, as Division 16 SASP Editor-Elect, as Division 48 Immigration Working Group Chair, and on the Division 37 DREAM SIG Executive Committee. She is also actively involved in the National Association of School Psychologists and Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice, where she serves on the Justice Reform Task Force. Her main research interest is the school to prison pipeline and a focus on children in detention. She is involved in the leadership of the American Psychological Association Interdivisional Immigration Project team, which works on advocacy projects focused on protecting immigrants from harm and recently received a grant from Division 48 to work on a project to support collaboration with community activists to support immigration advocacy.
Student Committee Working Group
The Student Committee Working Group (SCWG) facilitated several events to promote students’ engagement in peace psychology-related works. For example, the SGWC hosted a webinar on grant writing for the Div. 48 small grants program and convened a student panel for increasing awareness about student-driven peace research, peacebuilding, and peace education. Further, the SWGC conducted a live screening of the 2016 film, Chocolate of Peace directed by Dr. Gwen Burnyeat and Pablo Mejía Trujillo followed by a discussion on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in Colombia’s social-political context. Additionally, the SCWG invited Tatiana Scantlebury, SDG Global Goals Ambassador at UNA-USA to discuss the various pathways to peace work.
Justice for Animals
The Justice for Animals Working Group (JAWG) of Division 48 seeks to advocate for a more just world for animals wherever they may be found. Several years ago, Harold Takooshian,Ph.D. helped to organize a cross-APA divisional membership in JAWG and we now have JAWG members from many APA divisions. We welcome all psychologists to join JAWG. We established a charter membership group and most members have remained active and encouraging of our goals.
Most years we sponsor a symposium at the APA Conference in August. These symposia consist of original scholarship by members. For example, Tina Bloom, Ph.D. has done fascinating work on judging animal emotions through facial expressions, Steven Handwerker,Ph.D. has presented plans about trying to end the dog meat trade in Asia, and Robin Treptow, Ph.D.did work on neurological correlates of interactions with dogs.
Sad to say, the pandemic curtailed some of our work and symposia. However, we still did some presentations. We are hoping to have a full slate for APA 2024. In the meantime we encourage each other to continue to work for justice for animals, publish in scholarly journals, act as reviewers for journals, engage in scholarly pursuits - all with the welfare of animals as our primary objective. For the future, we plan to print a compilation of all papers presented at APA by JAWG scholars. Interested in making the world a more just place for animals? Come join us!