Dear friend, The last year of my life has been very different from what went before. For the first time in a very long time I have a job instead of working as a contractor. Being permanently employed was not something I aspired to, but then I found myself with the new title of Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for the Partners in Trauma Healing Project. And not once have I regretted my decision. More than anything else I now have space to think and opportunities to share my thoughts with like-minded colleagues. What an extraordinary gift that is! I joined CVT for two reasons - to  continue my work in building the skills of people engaged in the fight against torture, and to carry on exploring the most effective ways of supporting torture survivors. Regardless of whether I work as a scientist, a teacher, or an activist, I am a part of an evolving international movement. A movement in which each person builds on the work of those who have gone before and depends upon friends and colleagues close to home and around the world.	Craig Higson-Smith is the Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for CVT’s Partners in Trauma Healing Project. He is a research psychologist, founding member of the South African Institute for Traumatic Stress and university instructor. His special interests are in the fields of child protection, cross-cultural psychology and community-based intervention.
Perhaps the most important way in which our movement is evolving is in the way we create and share information. By constantly improving our systems for collecting, storing, analyzing and disseminating data about how people heal we are able to continually enhance our practice and increase our impact. For me, these data systems are the building blocks of what our movement will look like in the near future. And so these days I watch the sun set over the skyline of Johannesburg while in Skype meetings with my colleagues who are just starting their days in Minneapolis. Also on the call might be friends from Lebanon or Cameroon. Sometimes it gets lonely, but no more so for me than it does for the thousands of activists around the world who work against torture despite regimes that would silence them. Never before have I felt so plugged into the international movement against torture, or so assured of the ultimate success of our mission.
With warm regards, Craig Higson-Smith, MA Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor, Partners in Trauma Healing Project

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