Tree of Life trust provides group-based and community-based trauma healing workshops. The Tree of Life process was created in 2002 initially to empower youth and in 2003 was adapted as a healing and empowerment tool to support the healing journey of victims of organized violence.
Tree of Life also provides Psycho-education to grassroots communities, including to women, youth and community leaders. They also establish strategic partnerships with other peacebuilding organisations and have a strong evidence-based approach.
The workshops are organized around 3 days where 8 survivors share their stories guided by 2 facilitators. The process supports both intra and interpersonal healing and has made impact at the community level. The organization has trained over 100 community based facilitators across 7 Provinces to carry out the healing work. In 2017 close to 50 new trainees were undergoing training, being a 2 year long process.
Between 2003 and 2016 ToL has held over 1230 healing workshops for over 10,000 people, mostly survivors of violence. But the workshops also include the participation of the community identified Offenders in order to create positive restorative justice and community reconciliation effects. Over 90% of participants who were followed up have seen their trauma symptoms reduced and noted that they were more functional in their communities. And communities who experienced conflicts have successfully achieved reconciliation and peaceful human relation.
With over 100 thoroughly trained community-based facilitators Tree of Life has the human resource capacity to conduct at least 100 trauma healing workshops for 800 people (9600 per year). However, the organisation current funding only allows them to train around 25 workshops monthly. While this is already a large number, the number of people in Zimbabwe needing healing are too numerous to count.