A five-days foundational helping skills (FHS) training was conducted virtually from 5^th to 9^th January 2021 under the Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP) initiative, supported by World Health Organization (WHO). This training focused on providing basic mental health and psychosocial helping skills to a group of non-specialists. A total of 14 undergraduate students of social work and psychology participated in the training while psychosocial experts Pragya Shrestha and Indira Pradhan facilitated the training.

This third wave of training for social work students was preceded by the first wave and second wave for nursing students and public health students respectively. The training focused on contents such as verbal and nonverbal communication skills, empathy, rapport building, etc. After the training, the knowledge and competence of the students in functional helping skills will be evaluated to test the feasibility of the training curriculum.

The participants thanked the organizers for conducting the training and shared that they had learned about using normalizing words through role play. They also shared that due to similar educational background, it had been beneficial for them to learn basic helping skills but emphasized that they still had a lot to learn. Now, they are going to start implementing the skills learned from the training at home.