**4. Methodology**

The implementation of such a project required a methodology with a clear-cut description, feasible and doable but at the same time flexible enough to adapt to unforeseen field events in order to let us plan our actions on a daily basis.

#### **4.1 Population**

The population in this project comprised of two groups: child soldiers or those associated with the battle and the untrained field assistants to tackle the issues of psychological consequences of traumatic stress (10 NGO "Social workers" and 10 organizers from the village community).

The structure, which organized the field activities, had listed 500 children, but, finally 400 were recruited into the project. The sample retained for the study of psychopathological disorders was made up of 345 children broken down as follows: 93 children from *Kaadé,* 80 from *Béoué*, 118 from *Ké-Bouébo*, 67 from *Péhé* and 67 from *Pantrokin.*

Local NGO workers and workers from the village community, many of whom had no experience, assisted children with psychic suffering. Most local agents were either veterans or inhabitants of the village who had lived the events themselves and who had not been assisted psychologically. As for the local agents, they were condemned to live with permanent anguish, in the midst of the villagers under precarious sanitary and security conditions.

#### **4.2 The project itself**

The project, which took two years to complete, progressed through many phases:

an initial assessment phase before intervention, with an initial assessment of the psychopathological situation of child soldiers and a definition of the intervention to be taken for social reintegration of those children;

an action phase with psycho medical consultations, educative assistance by the organizers of the structure (group therapy, literacy, re socialization), term assessment seminars.

Children's psychiatric consultation took place every three months. Thus, for a week, the organizers made an assessment of the situation of children and the stock of global assistance.

A final assessment phase of the children's psychopathological situation was conducted after intervention in the year 2008.
