The CORESZON Team
We are a diverse, interdisciplinary group of trainers, clinicians, social workers and scientists united by a shared passion: Bringing people together to strengthen community wellbeing.
Makka Dzumaeva
James Desai
As a health scientist, I’m fascinated by the question of what keeps people healthy. Among the many answers, caring about mental health is definitely one of them! And as science shows: community care and good social relationships have a key role.
As part of the team at CORESZON, I am grateful to be able to advance this issue as a social responsibility as well. Mental health should not be a luxury. People help each other, learn and grow together by sharing their experiences and competencies. I count myself among them.
I am James Desai. I worked in various NGOs for many years. Before I came to CORESZON, I worked for Elbkinder Childcare Services. I am now trying to find partners and supporters for CORESZON.
Good mental health for everyone, cooperative teamwork and resilience are important challenges for our future. At CORESZON, I can shape our society in this direction and thus make it a little fairer.
Everyone has the right to health. Mental health and resilience are important cornerstones for this. CORESZON feels at home where people support each other, learn together and work together. Because the idea is: resilience grows in the community!
Roos Kengen
I discovered CORESZON in 2020, when the pandemic had just begun and I was in the final stages of my studies. A time when supportive interpersonal relationships were growing in importance for everyone and countless creative ways were being found to maintain a sense of community and cohesion.
As a budding health scientist and newly trained CORESZON trainer, I love learning about what it takes to facilitate action for resiliency in times of crisis. I was particularly pleased to be able to explore the topic of resilience further, both practically and theoretically, as part of my bachelor’s thesis and workshops with students at HAW Hamburg.
I continue to experience in many ways that social support is important not only in times of crisis, but above all in our everyday interactions in order to maintain our individual and community mental well-being. Therefore, I am happy to be part of the Coreszon team and to promote resilience as a community resource that each and every one of us can contribute to.
Monica Blotevogel
One of the things I’m most grateful for in my life is the chance to work with my team and our partners to find answers to a question that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember: What gives people the strength to overcome (and often even grow from) crises?
Before we started CORESZON the with Peter Moerle Foundation in 2017, I spent many years working with children, young people and their families at our Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. It was from these families that I learned most of what I know about resilience, navigating individual, collective and systemic challenges and, most importantly, the infinite value of good relationships.
As we build CORESZON with a growing, diverse community dedicated to changing how we talk about and “do” mental health, I am constantly reminded of how lucky I am to be able to learn from others and share the knowledge we gather with each individual and community we have the privilege of writing yet another chapter in our story about community resilience with. My greatest hope is that we get to share this adventure with as many people as possible.
Awaz Almuslim
I am Awaz and I am studying health sciences. After my internship, I was so enthusiastic about working at CORESZON that I am now very happy to be part of the evaluation team. This young and dynamic team motivates me to enjoy working, learning and developing myself!
Philipp Wolf
Before I came to work with CORESZON, I spent many years helping families and children navigate challenging times as a social worker with Child Services. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was: The things that give us joy in difficult times and our sources of strength and hope are just as diverse as we humans and the values, customs and aspirations that we strive to realize in our lives.
With CORESZON, I hope to improve access to the many resources that we tend to overlook when the going gets tough. And I’m convinced that the best way to do this is by letting ourselves be inspired by the people and communities we meet.
Khorsheed Rezay
My pathway to becoming a resilience trainer began long before we started CORESZON. For over 20 years, I’ve been working as an interpreter for Dari/Farsi alongside individuals and families that seek care in our psychiatric services at the University of Hamburg Medical Center. The many lessons I’ve learned in this work about the different paths that lead back to our inner strengths and how helpful relationships give us a sense of safety shape the values we cultivate together.
Today, the in resilience Workshops that I do in German, Dari and Farsi, witnessing how we are able to give each other strength when we share our knowledge and skills with each other is a constant source of joy – especially when this happens between different cultures! It’s moments like these that drive my enthusiasm for raising awareness for the vital role of relationships for growing resilience.
Our growing Trainer Network
Our Vision: every community, everywhere has someone who can share simple knowledge and skills with neighbors, colleagues, family and friends. Each new Trainer brings new skills, knowledge and helpful perspectives to our Network – and helps us widen our reach as we work together to realize our common goal.
Johanna Haupt
Johanna Haupt is one of the dedicated trainers who make CORESZON grow – each with their own competencies and experiences that strengthen us as a community!
Johanna has been living in Hamburg since 2003. Her creative work and her many years of experience working with women going through times of crisis shape her approach as a resilience trainer with CORESZON: an appreciation for the strength we can draw from an awareness of our own vulnerability.
Her professional background as an occupational therapist, alternative practitioner for psychotherapy and clinical art therapist is supported by a versatile artistic practice, which is also a special enrichment for our network.
Johanna’s artistic vita includes two music albums, numerous concerts and contributions to exhibitions. With her artist collective, she is committed to destigmatization in society.
Johanna is a mother of two children and develops practical additions to our tools with us.
Katharina Lange
Katharina Lange is one of our newest trainers to help CORESZON grow. Katharina has an entirely different background. She comes from the music industry and has a professional background as a PR & marketing expert.
In recent years, she has made the topic of communication hers. Besides finding the answer to the question “How can sustainable communication work?”, Katharina supports families in the first year after the birth of their child through “Wellcome project” in her spare time. Katharina soaks up all the CORESZON knowledge that comes into her hands and head.
In her opinion, the biggest problem of our time is that we no longer listen to understand. We listen in order to respond. Katharina’s goal: to counteract this problem step by step with CORESZON and to open an “or not” door for all of us.
Kerstin Estherr
As a resilience trainer at Coreszon, I follow personal life questions: What makes people strong, what do they find support in, how does creativity mobilize our own strengths, and can we strengthen each other to regain our inner balance after crises?
As a clinical art therapist, social worker and non-medical practitioner of psychotherapy, in my daily work with mentally ill women, with foster parents and refugees, I experience again and again how people help each other by sharing their experiences and competencies. Neurobiology and resilience research give our work a solid basis, but it is the stories of each individual person from which we can learn and draw strength.
Oliver Borszik
Oliver Borszik is an advisor and resilience trainer at CORESZON. In workshops, training courses and seminars, he focuses on diversity & inclusion, migration and integration and mental well-being.
These questions shape his approach in workshops, training courses and seminars: How can people be empowered to develop their potential? How can resilient and meaningful connections with other people be created and shaped?
He completed his doctorate in Islamic Studies and initially worked in Middle East research. After gaining further professional experience in political consulting and refugee counseling, he has focused on adult education since 2017.
At the beginning of the pandemic, he began training as a resilience trainer at CORESZON, which he completed in October 2021. Oliver Borszik combines the garden method with suitable and scientifically sound approaches and methods, such as the Zurich Resource Model (ZRM) or Anti-Bias.
He confidently and empathetically guides people to experience how they can be experts in themselves and grow – both professionally and personally. He lives in Hamburg, is married and the father of 2 school-age children.
CORESZON PARTNERS
CORESON’s international work relies on partnerships with people who bring our capacity-strengthening program to communities that we would otherwise be unable to reach. In addition to their extensive training experience, Partners share what they learn from trainers in Kenya, Iraq and Ukraine with us.
HAMIDAH TULU
Mariia Lomberg
I got to know CORESZON in 2022, during a difficult time for me, my family and my country. And since then, ideas, principles and techniques I have built with CORESZON have been very helpful, supportive and inspiring for me. I can feel their impact and the difference they make: not only recognizing pleasant and joyful moments, serenity, love, gratitude, but also how they feel in my body. When I teach the Garden Method to Ukrainians living in Germany and Ukraine, I also observe how the opportunity to share something beautiful with each other, to support each other, strengthens our connections and our health.
When I was young, I always wondered what could unite us as people. With CORESZON, I can put a great way of connecting people and improving our wellbeing together into practice.
