Our Humanitarian Peer Supporters (HPS)
Biographies in progress
In alphabetical order
Peer support: a link in the chain of recovery for humanitarian aid workers
CoCreate Humanity (CCH) is pleased to introduce its current peer support team. Humanitarian peer support cannot be improvised. It needs to be framed and supervised, and the principle of recovery is essential for supporting a humanitarian peer beneficiary.
To take the professionalization of humanitarian peer support a step further, and to officially establish the position of humanitarian peer supporter (HPS), CoCreate Humanity will be training its whole team in Switzerland from November 12 to 15, 2024 with Sylvain Goujard (“Psychological first aid and training of trainers in humanitarian peer support”).
Sarah Verrier has been admitted to the 6th class 2024-2025 of the University Diploma in Peer Support in Mental Health and Neurodevelopment at the Centre Ressource Réhabilitation (CRR) and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, in France.
The HPS team is supervised by psychologists in individual and group sessions. The team supervisors are Abdoulaye Mounkeila, Genny Dalsasso, Ieva Prapuolenyte-Nizaraly and Sabine Grégoire.
Access our peer support team is free of charge and by appointment by email: info@cocreatehumanity.org
CCH works with a wide network of mental health and holistic care professionals. Peer beneficiaries can thus pursue or have a parallel follow-up according to their individual and personal needs.
Abdoulaye Mounkeila
With nearly eight years of experience, Abdoulaye has made mental health care access and psychosocial support his main focus within humanitarian organizations. His mission is to find innovative, accessible, and high-quality solutions to alleviate human suffering, whether it be that of program and project beneficiaries or humanitarian workers, in humanitarian crisis contexts, particularly in the Sahel region.
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This challenge has led him to work in Niger and Mali alongside national and international NGOs such as Première Urgence Internationale, Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion, Save the Children International, the French Red Cross, COOPI, Search For Common Ground, and Le Pélican, where he worked on parenting guidance for parents with mental disabilities. His work has brought him into contact with various populations: host communities, displaced persons, refugees, migrants, sex workers, populations affected by armed conflicts, victims of sexual violence and trafficking, as well as repatriates.
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Passionate about environmental preservation and protection, Abdoulaye is also a founding member of the Nigerian NGO "Environnement Action et Développement Durable". Outside of his professional responsibilities, he is passionate about sports walking and dedicates part of his free time to volunteering, where he finds a personal balance that enriches his life and fuels his commitment to mental well-being.
Anne-Sophie Porche
With over 20 years of professional experience in International Cooperation and Solidarity in strategic positions both in France and abroad, Anne-Sophie has supervised, trained, and supported multicultural, multidisciplinary teams in both French and English.
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Her senior management roles within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, United Nations agencies (UNICEF & WFP), and NGOs (Doctors of the World, Action Against Hunger, and Humanity & Inclusion) have allowed her to carry out missions in France, Haiti, Mauritania, Rwanda, Sudan/Darfur, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Comoros, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, and Armenia.
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Anne-Sophie has coordinated emergency, post-emergency, and development programs in Public and Community Health at the level of national healthcare structures, vulnerable populations in France and abroad, and displaced persons camps, while also handling representation and advocacy responsibilities with governmental and international bodies. She has been trained in psychological support techniques used by the International Committee of the Red Cross. As a volunteer, she was a member of the psychological support team at Action Against Hunger in Paris, assisting expatriates returning from missions and addressing security incidents during missions. To fulfill her role as Nutrition Cluster Coordinator at UNICEF for Somalia, she obtained the United Nations SSAFE certificate, "Safe and Secure Approaches to the Field Environment," after two weeks of immersion in a Kenyan military camp.
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Always striving to refine her general and technical skills for teaching, supporting, and advising, Anne-Sophie has undertaken certification courses such as "Program Design and Group Facilitation in Professional Training," "Leadership and Intercultural Management-COF," "Reconsolidation Therapy - Foundations and Practice," and "Compassion Fatigue - Vicarious Trauma." Anne-Sophie has always been dedicated to ensuring the well-being of humanitarian staff, whether they are paid, volunteers, or interns, focusing on preserving their mental and physical integrity across cultures and managing stress and compassion fatigue through listening, sharing, mutual support, and kindness, with the adage: "The word Human is in the word humanitarian."
Joining the CCH team represented an opportunity to contribute to the well-being of humanitarian personnel by supporting peer assistance and mental health recovery efforts. This commitment materialized in 2023 as a volunteer humanitarian peer supporter. Anne-Sophie holds degrees in International Relations, specializing in Diplomacy and Defense Strategy, International Geopolitics, and Public Health - Management of Public Health Services and Actions from Paris universities.
Brigitte Louison
After obtaining a social worker diploma and a bachelor's degree in clinical psychology, Brigitte quickly directed her professional choices towards international solidarity and humanitarian work. Following her logistics training at the Bioforce center, she decided to further specialize by taking courses in humanitarian project coordination, also with Bioforce.
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Brigitte has dedicated around ten years to working on the ground in the field of international solidarity, engaging in various projects such as professional training and insertion (AFVP - Burkina Faso), care and follow-up of people living with HIV (Centre Muraz - Burkina Faso), reception and follow-up of migrants (Caritas - Morocco), and monitoring of detainees (ICRC - Madagascar).
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After supporting learners and graduates from the Bioforce training center in their professional projects and careers for over 15 years, Brigitte is now embarking on a new phase of her professional life. She is now focused on individual, collective, and team coaching, training, and supporting career transitions, particularly through skills assessments and IKIGAI pathways.
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What drives Brigitte is the opportunity to contribute, through support, training, and coaching, to the strengthening of each team member's capacities to help them work together towards achieving a common goal. She is committed to enhancing self-awareness to foster a professional and managerial stance that is both meaningful and authentic, and that generates success and joy for oneself and every team member.
Etsamanga Caroline Piers
As a child, she felt a deep need for meaning, delicacy, coherence, freedom, and joy. Gifted with great sensitivity, she long perceived this quality as a burden, often finding herself in conflict, resisting her own nature.
The common thread in her professional life has always been care. After 10 years of experience working with children, from infants to teenagers, and 5 years on humanitarian missions abroad as an administrator and logistics manager, deputy mission chief, or community approach consultant (in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo), she chose to redirect her career towards a path that remains true to her calling to care. She then decided to dedicate herself to guiding individuals and groups towards greater harmony and inner peace, with gentleness, precision, and delicacy.
It was during her humanitarian missions that she discovered TTT (Trauma Tapping Technique). In the field, she also became aware of the deep scars left by past traumas, the accumulation of stress, and secondary trauma that affected her to the point of pushing her to leave this work to undertake a broader awakening.
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Her encounter with TTT, a first-aid gesture, profoundly transformed her life: she moved from terror to joy, from insecurity to confidence. As soon as she mastered this technique, she felt a deep desire to share it.
A long therapeutic and training journey led her to develop confidence in herself, in life, and especially in her sensitivity, which she began to see not as a handicap, but as a resource, a talent. She discovered the art of listening, communication, and questioning, and devoted herself to serving those in need. It took her nearly 10 years to refine her learning, particularly through regular meditation practice, as well as the discovery of Maieusthesia and Janzu. Maieusthesia, an approach initiated by Thierry Tournebise, also known as the psychology of relevance, perfectly aligns with her aspiration to offer quality attention to each being, in all their dimensions. The struggle became unnecessary. With Janzu, a warm water aquatic care based on presence and movement, she reconnected more deeply with the joy of being.
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Today, she supports adults, children who have survived violence, women preparing for motherhood, teenagers suffering from phobias, grieving families, people preparing for exams, as well as men and women at a turning point in their lives, helping them to unfold their talents and spread their wings. She also works with groups to improve communication with themselves and others.
TTT offers a return to the body, supports peace in the heart, and prevents violence. Maieusthesia restores dialogue, allowing one to be both close and distinct with oneself and others. Meditation offers the gift of presence to oneself. Janzu, in turn, allows for direct communication with the body, heart, and spirit, without words, in the magic of water, producing the effects of prolonged meditation. It is with this palette of complementary approaches that Etsamanga guides and teaches today.
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As a member and trainer of the international Peaceful Heart Network and the French Association for TTT, she offers workshops and training sessions.
Meeting with CCH was a natural step for Etsamanga. Having experienced and witnessed the isolation felt during or after missions due to traumatic events, she is convinced that prevention, awareness, and better mental health care for humanitarian workers are essential. She particularly emphasizes the importance of recognizing the underestimated impact of secondary trauma, which occurs when a person has not directly experienced a traumatic situation but has witnessed it, or heard, seen, or read about it. Taking care of the mental health of humanitarian workers is a service to the greater good.
Engaging in peer support with CCH means offering others the listening and support space she once lacked.
Fabienne Deraemaeker
Fabienne Deraemaeker was born in Belgium. She graduated as a social worker and began her career working with children in difficulty in Chad, Niger, and Romania. Eager to join the ICRC, she decided to further her studies and earned a Master’s degree in Socio-Anthropology and Political Science, along with a specialization in Humanitarian Action (NOHA).
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In 2007, Fabienne joined the ICRC and carried out various missions as a Protection Delegate and later as a Deputy Head of Sub-Delegation. She was deployed to countries such as Liberia, the Central African Republic, Pakistan, Senegal, and South Sudan. Additionally, she participated in two rapid deployment missions for the Federation, including during the earthquake in Haiti.
Upon returning to Belgium, Fabienne became the director of centers for children in difficulty and an asylum seekers' center. She also specialized in mental health and psychotraumatology. Noticing the increasing number of crises in her own country, she joined the emergency unit of the Ministry of Public Health, where she was tasked with establishing a center of expertise for the psychosocial support of victims in the acute phase of collective crises.
Fabienne then reconnected with the culture of emergency work, a passion of hers, but she also noticed that the sector continued to struggle with providing adequate support to its workers, whether in terms of primary, secondary, or tertiary prevention.
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She is convinced that cultural change must come from within institutions, a path to be traveled together by both management and workers. For her, this collective approach is essential, as humanitarian workers themselves sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, contribute to perpetuating the erroneous image of the "superman," passing on this vision to newcomers and stigmatizing those who show signs of vulnerability.
However, Fabienne acknowledges that society, by heroizing humanitarian workers, also deprives them of the right to simply be human. A hero, by definition, is perceived as a superhuman and infallible being, which denies humanitarian workers the possibility of expressing their fears and vulnerabilities.
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It is this desire to restore humanity to the humanitarian world that motivated Fabienne to contribute to Co-Create Humanity as a specialist in peer support. She firmly believes that peer support is an essential and necessary protection, alongside other efforts, to prevent post-traumatic stress syndrome and the suffering that affects not only the worker but also their surroundings and the institution itself.
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Fabienne wishes to join collective efforts to help humanitarian workers remain present on the ground with victims while maintaining their own mental health and continuing to practice one of the most rewarding professions in the world.
Manoela Lucena
Manoela Lucena is a Clinical, Social, and Cross-Cultural Psychologist with extensive experience in trauma and culturally sensitive mental health interventions. Currently serving as the MHPSS Advisor and Technical Expert with the Global Surge Platform for Save the Children International, she previously led the MHPSS & Protection Department for Action Against Hunger, overseeing psychosocial support programs for Ukrainian refugees in Romania and Poland, and internally displaced persons in Ukraine. Manoela has dedicated over 15 years to the humanitarian sector, including 7 years of specialized work in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), Gender-Based Violence (GBV), Emergency Psychology, Disaster & Trauma Psychology, and EMDR therapy. She has contributed to numerous international organizations such as UNICEF, the British Red Cross, and Save the Children across countries like the UK, Brazil, Peru, Ireland, the US, Norway, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine.
In her private practice, she has supported humanitarian workers, expatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers, driven by a personal commitment to combat the stigma around mental health. Her approach emphasizes the importance of working within people's cultural belief systems, fostering self-awareness, self-compassion, and empowerment through active listening. Manoela’s academic work reflects her passion, with her undergraduate thesis on the sociocultural and psychological adaptation of Syrian refugees published in 2021. She completed her MSc thesis in 2020 on the influence of self-care on burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress among humanitarian workers—research that became particularly relevant during the pandemic where she first got involved with Co-Create Humanity, later joining its peer support group in 2021 to further assist in this vital work.
Manoela frequently conducts workshops on topics such as "The Cost of Caring – Caring for the Carers," where she addresses the consequences of vicarious trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue faced by humanitarian workers. Her sessions provide practical coping strategies, including psychological first aid, peer support, and self-care techniques. In her private practices she offered individual counselling to humanitarian workers, expatriates, refugees, and asylum seekers, remaining dedicated to empowering others and improving mental health support in the humanitarian field.
Mukasa Moses
Mukasa is a Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Specialist, an independent consultant, and a qualitative researcher. His expertise lies in integrated programming and community-based approaches to mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in humanitarian contexts, particularly focusing on populations affected by conflict and displacement. His work strongly emphasizes intersectionality, ensuring that gender-responsive strategies are incorporated into support systems for those impacted by these crises.
Currently, he serves as the Inter-Regional MHPSS Expert for the East and Southern Africa Regions at Jesuit Refugee Services. Additionally, he is the Board Chair at the Institute for Community-Based Social Therapy and a Doctoral/PhD researcher at Ghent University in Belgium and Makerere University School of Psychology in Uganda, where his research centers on suicide in humanitarian settings - a topic he has explored throughout his education and career in the MHPSS field over the past decade. Mukasa has undergone extensive professional training in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in humanitarian settings, with a particular focus on community-based approaches.
Over the years, he has been actively involved in suicide advocacy and decriminalization initiatives, as well as in the research, coordination, and implementation of MHPSS programs across East, Central, and Southern Africa. His commitment also extends to similar projects in European countries, including Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.Mukasa's research journey into suicide prevention began with a pivotal experience: while working with populations affected by forced displacement, he observed a significant increase in suicide and deliberate self-harm cases among refugees in East Africa, particularly in Uganda. This fueled his deep interest in suicide prevention within this vulnerable population, leading him to pursue a Master of Public Health in Health Promotion. His research, titled *Predictors of Suicidal Ideations Among Refugees in Palorinya Refugee Settlement of Northern Uganda*, underscores his dedication to addressing this critical issue.
Mukasa has collaborated with key organizations in Global Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Headquarters in Geneva. This collaboration resulted in impactful research on suicide in humanitarian settings, culminating in the development of suicide guidance notes and a suicide mitigation toolkit for UNHCR operations, titled "Planning for Prevention and Risk Mitigation of Suicide in Refugee Settings", published in 2022.
Paul Kopelen
He grew up in the Federal Republic of Germany along the southern border before moving to the United States.
As a young adult, he served with NATO in Bosnia, supporting United Nations peacekeeping operations and cataloging genocidal war crime sites across eastern Bosnia. It was there that he first understood what war and atrocities truly meant.
He spent 15 years supporting the United States Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, conducting humanitarian demining operations and other activities across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In these locations, he worked and coordinated with the United Nations, Coalition partners, NGOs, and IGOs.
During these years, he gained a deep understanding of the impact of depression, suicide, and PTSD on the humanitarian workforce, exacerbated by multiple field rotations without support from their organizations. Throughout this period, he also supported Coalition counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. He retired from government service in 2017.
He completed an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice and Psychology, a Master's degree in International Military Relations, and another Master's in Military Science.
In his free time, he enjoys reading, SCUBA diving, and traveling.
Rodney Gallwey
Rodney Gallwey has dedicated the past twenty years to working primarily in the humanitarian (ICRC) and development (UNDP) sectors at operational levels. His commitment has led him to engage in complex contexts, including rapid emergency deployments and crisis management. This experience has allowed him to work at various scales, whether at the national, regional, or headquarters level, giving him a deep understanding of organizational nuances.
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Throughout his career, Rodney has observed a significant gap between the realities on the ground in the countries where he was deployed and the perceptions of different managerial levels. He has also faced the challenges of burnout, the distress of his colleagues, constant stress, security incidents, and the uncertainty that characterizes these environments.
From these challenging experiences, he has learned that human and intercultural connections are invaluable and that mutual learning is essential for building true resilience. In his view, peer support is crucial for mutually supporting one another in these high-risk sectors and moving forward together on the path to recovery.
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Rodney is trilingual, fluent in French, English, and Spanish. In addition to his humanitarian work, he also offers olfactotherapy, a practice focused on emotional healing.
Sarah Verrier
Since 2010, Sarah has been committed to the field of international solidarity, working with various non-governmental organizations, including Solidarités International, Handicap International – Humanity & Inclusion, Action Against Hunger, and Bioforce. She began her career in support roles, particularly in administrative, financial, and human resources management, before transitioning to operations and project management.
Throughout her career, Sarah has been deployed to numerous countries, including Afghanistan, Kenya, South Sudan, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Jordan. Having returned to France a little over a year ago, she is currently working as a trainer in humanitarian professions.
Stérenn Péresse
Stérenn Péresse, originally from southern Brittany, was born in 1975 in Chambray-lès-Tours, France, into a family of travelers. Her ancestors were farmers, fishermen, restaurateurs, and carpenters. She grew up near a forest in the western suburbs of Paris and spent every summer by the sea.
After obtaining a "scientific baccalaureate that opens all doors," Stérenn chose to pursue a career in hospitality with the ambition of opening her own dinner theater. However, her path took a different turn, shaped by various encounters, experiences, and a transformative trip to Cameroon in 2002.
The first ten years of her career were dedicated to hospitality, internet startups, real estate, and audiovisual production. It was after her journey to Cameroon that her second professional life began.
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For ten years, Stérenn split her time between France and Africa, working as a humanitarian in roles related to administration, finance, human resources, and logistics (DAF-RH-LOG), providing support in both emergency and development contexts, and as a social worker. She collaborated with a range of organizations, from small local groups to large international entities like the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross).
From a young age, Stérenn was fascinated by differences, and over time, she continuously explored their richness. Her professional journey is a mosaic of operational and management roles across various sectors, including associations, startups, SMEs, NGOs, individual enterprises, international organizations, and local governments. She has also held various statuses: volunteer, employee, expatriate, temporary worker, contractor, and now, entrepreneur.
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After a second professional life filled with twists and turns, Stérenn began her third life in Sète, in the south of France, where she has lived since 2015.
In 2012, she created the Facebook group LIHFE (L’Information Humanitaire For Everybody) with the idea of centralizing and sharing humanitarian information, bringing together experiences, and offering a space for discussion. For her, it was time to co-create and share methods and tools that she wished had been available at the start of her career, particularly to support humanitarian workers.
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To realize this vision, Stérenn pursued further training and is now a professional transition coach and a trainer in management and human resources through Couleurs RH, her Qualiopi-certified training organization founded in 2018. She is passionate about reactivating each person's motivation so they can give their best to a project that inspires them, while respecting themselves and others.
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In 2019, with the creation of CoCreate Humanity, Stérenn felt a deep sense of fulfillment: finally, a structure was dedicated to the mental health of humanitarian workers, an often-overlooked aspect. It was with gratitude and enthusiasm that she joined CCH as a peer supporter in March-April 2024. For her, it's an opportunity to use and share her rich professional experience within an organization dedicated to supporting humanitarians.
Thibault Malzieu
Thibault, passionate about human development, has over 18 years of experience as an expert in emergency humanitarian logistics. He has worked with renowned organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). For more than five years, he has shared his expertise as a trainer, collaborating with Bioforce and Toyota Gibraltar Stockholding. In addition to his logistics skills, Thibault is also a coach and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Master Practitioner, and he has served as a peer supporter for MSF Switzerland.
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In 2021, Thibault founded "Le Pas Sage au Trible," a retreat center primarily aimed at humanitarian workers. Located in the heart of nature, this sanctuary provides an ideal setting for recharging and regaining energy. Today, Thibault is fully dedicated to developing this project, which he views as essential for offering his peers a vital space for relaxation and decompression.
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Deeply empathetic, Thibault understands the critical importance of professional support in managing the often challenging realities of humanitarian work. He is committed to continually evolving in his role as a supporter. Passionate about life, collaboration, and the sharing of joy, Thibault embodies a genuine commitment to well-being and personal development.