A Workshop on 'Guidance for psychosocial Couselling and Covid Helper Skills’  for the NSS program officers of Kashmir division was jointly organised by Mahatma Gandhi National Council of Rural Education (MGNCRE) and program coordinator, NSS, university of Kashmir
Dr Pallavi Kaul, and Dr Priyavart Sharma from Mahatma Gandhi National Coucil of Rural Education (MGNCRE) were the resource persons for the workshop.
Around 60 NSS programmes officers from colleges of Kashmir participated in the webinar
The main aim of the workshop was to understand the challenges faced by the student volunteers and programme officers in reaching out to covid 19 victims. The workshop intended to orient participants to help the volunteers integrate psychosocial support skills into their services when they come in contact with infected people during the pandemic.
Partcipants from different colleges from Kashmir shared their fisrt hand experiences . Major issues that the partcipants highlighted were, mental stress, social stigmas, misinformation, fear of vaccination, lack of proper services with medical settings. Most of the participants applauded the services offered by NGOS . 
Dr pallavi Kaul from Mahatma Gandhi National Council for Rural Education pointed out that the need of the hour is that we ought to channelize the individual efforts in collective manner. She raised her concern over the wastage of resources in absence of connectivity between individual efforts. For example , when there is a call for food requirement by any needy person, multiple agencies, individuals make efforts to help and as a result the needy person receives excessive quantities of food, which is eventually wasted. It was in this context that Dr pallavi called for devising strategies for equitable distribution of services.
In her presentation, Dr pallavi reiterated the importance of ministry initiative ‘each one reach one’ and 'Jaha beemar vahi Upchar'.
She advocated formation of the 5- helper teams; 1) Hospital Management team 2) Non-hospital management team 3) family related team 4. Sharing the information of medical essentials 5. Communicating with covid patient.
All these teams should be equipped with right kind of informations , such as a non-hospital management team should keep all information regarding NGOS distribution food, covid helpline numbers  and family related teams need to be trained to give emotional support to covid affected.
Most of the participants expressed their concern over major challenges faced specially in education and economic sectors, but everyone believes that life should be prioritised right now.

Coordinator NSS Dr Mussvir Ahmed highlighted the aims and objectives of the workshop, which he said intended to equip the NSS program officers with skills on Covid19 management through volunteerism.

https://kashmirreader.com/2021/05/23/kus-nss-hosts-one-day-online-workshop-on-psychosocial-counselling/