History

Words from the founding members

Indira Anupindi, Founder:

I came to this country to attend a conference but since all my family were settled in US there was tremendous pressure, emotional blackmailing from all quarters to stay back. I did not know what career to start or what I should be doing. Social Work was my profession as well as my passion.

Since this country and the culture were so new to me, I had to understand it more before I could practice. Unknowingly I built a cocoon around myself and started getting depressed. I realized that it was not the solution, so I went back to school again, got a job, and registered myself with BBS, CA.

I was trying to find a person under whose umbrella I could complete my licensing hours. I met several therapists, but then I also met Karita Hummer and instantly I could relate myself to her. I not only found a person under whom I could complete my licensing hours but also a mentor.

Being in the field of Social Work, many friends and relatives would talk about their personal life, domestic Violence issues, child abuse, child neglect and the list goes on. I was trying to create awareness and many a times, I referred them to professionals. Many were ignorant of the laws, others were aware of laws and would not like to seek professional help; there were others who, as immigrants to this country suffered from isolation, cultural shock and much much more.

I created my own blog page eight years back to help women in such circumstances, put in their stories. Each day stories were getting intense and I felt they needed professional help. I expressed my desire to serve the immigrant community and create awareness among them about laws and services offered by other non-profit organization.

Karita, without batting an eyelid, said Indira what are you waiting for. Start it. It is my dream too. Karita, who, herself, had started a few non-profit organizations, is very actively involved in refugee communities. She immediately knew what was in my mind and that paved the way for FACTR.

Karita Hummer, Founder

Karita Hummer's suggestion to Indira was to form a new Non-profit agency to help refugees and immigrant families overcome the psychological and social barriers or obstacles to adjustment to living and functioning in this country. The idea would be to utilize the mental health acumen of professionals from their own homelands.

Karita Hummer was drawing on her experience over the last decade as both a clinician and supervisor, in programs that benefited refugee and immigrant families from all over the world. Her specific clinical experience was primarily with individuals and families from former Yugoslavia. She had developed a deep compassion for these families who had escaped the shock and horror of ethnic cleansing, displacement and genocide and ethnic conflict. Their experiences had been at unfathomably wanton and despicable levels and she felt a great admiration for their strength and fortitude. She became a consummate advocate for refugee mental health.

Faced with achieving survival in the aftermath of such experience, weighed down as they were by traumatic stress, loss and separation, and now, great cultural novelty and change, where all landmarks of the self had vanished, Karita Hummer learned that most refugees could benefit from some assistance in managing their new physical and psychological terrain, if nothing more but to obtain psychological reorientation and a sense of personal direction.

In the process, she found that she was tapping almost every social work skill and area of clinical knowledge she had ever gained in her previous thirty-five years + as a Clinical Social Worker. Of the greatest value to have, was her understanding of the psychology of self, i.e., what builds self, what breaks it down and what can restore a sense of spirit after deep psychological trauma and injury, what innate strengths could be marshaled to restore and expand self.

Karita used this understanding with both the families and the staff she was involved in hiring, these staff, themselves, being often victims of the same tragedies that the refugee and immigrant families, they were helping, had endured. She wished to develop greater knowledge of what helps people in the circumstances in which she found so many of the refugees and immigrants with whom she worked, so that these goals could be better reached:

  1. Restoration of the Self.
  2. Reviving Spirit.
  3. Renewing Faith and trust in self and others.
  4. Resolution of conflict.
  5. Restoring calm.
  6. Mourning losses.
  7. Reestablishing psychological connections, old and new.
  8. Renewing, reworking and expanding identity.

Thus, it is Karita Hummer's sincere hope that FACTR will be a place where refugees and immigrants and those who would help them as professionals, will all grow to their fullest potential.