The Counselor Who Has Walked Many Miles In A Refugee's Shoes

A few months after fleeing war in Syria for safety in Germany, Ahmad Chahabi was at Berlin's main bus station. As he waited for a friend, he saw a child get off a bus with her family. Suddenly, the girl dived to the ground, sobbing. When he looked up, Chahabi realized she had mistaken a passenger jet overhead for a bomber. "It's not enough to move from one place to another," Chahabi realized. "War follows you."

That 2015 moment was pivotal. Today Chahabi, 28, is a peer psychosocial counselor in Berlin, part of a growing effort to address the mental health needs of refugees in Germany. He works for a Berlin-based non-profit called The organization provides mental health counseling for refugees in their native language, in the German capital and beyond. "He goes out and he's like a