The author of this field report, originally a professor in mathematics, describes in a personal report how oppression and violent conflict in Kosovo effected a change in his career, and how he became the founder and director of a local nongovernmental organisation in the field of education and psychosocial support for children. After the conflict, many psychosocial activities were organised. Unfortunately, local experience was often ignored in these projects.

This field report describes a ‘minimal budget project’ aimed at developing the expertise of a mixed group of workers. This project included nurses, community workers, counsellors and psychosocial workers attached to, or connected with, the mental health units in four hospitals in east Sri Lanka. In order to develop expertise, the project included a series of basic counselling training, as well as ongoing guidance during monthly peer supervision meetings.

This paper describes the lives of young, female former Tamil Tiger fighters, in Batticaloa, after the civil war in Sri Lanka. It shows how the kinship and solidarity found in female networks, in a matri-lineal society, has helped them survive the conflict. In Batticaloa, female-headed households bear the main burden for caring for the traumatised, and sometimes injured, returning female, former soldiers. This is done in the absence of social welfare services or specific medical or psychosocial care.

When young mothers, formerly associated with armed groups, return to communities, they are typically social isolated, stigmatised, and marginalised. This creates reintegration challenges for themselves, and their communities. Their children face child protection problems such as neglect, rejection and abuse. In this paper, the authors describe an innovative field practice - community based,participatory action research (PAR) - that meaningfully involved formerly associated young mothers, and other vulnerable young mothers, in their communities.