By Guus van der Veer, 2003

In the previous years Guus van der Veer has acquired vast experience in training local care workers in (post)war and unsafe areas, including in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, Bosnia and Cambodia. Van der Veer has gathered all these experiences in this book, in which he explains how people can be trained in (post)war and unsafe areas in order to help their fellow countrymen and companions in distress. Van der Veer expresses the conception that relatively simple skills are required for the assistance to victims of armed conflicts; skills and competences which stand close to basic social skills that many people acquire spontaneously. A short intensive training of some weeks should be sufficient to help out motivated people to the extent that they are able to function as grass roots care workers. The author in this sense demystifies the professional healthcare: in his book, care has been brought back to its basic proportions, as a helping