CoCreate Humanity (CCH)
CoCreate Humanity, founded in Geneva in 2019, supports the mental health and psychosocial well-being of humanitarian workers through professionalized peer support. It provides a safe, independent space where humanitarians can connect with trained and supervised peers who share lived field experience. By combining experiential knowledge with structured approaches, CCH complements traditional mental health services and addresses the unique psychological challenges of humanitarian work.
Géna Benavente
Géna Benavente is a clinical psychologist with a Master's in clinical psychopathology and psychoanalytic psychology from Université Lyon 2, France. As the daughter of humanitarian workers, she spent seventeen years living across multiple countries (Uganda, Jordan, Niger, Soudan, DRC and Kenya), an experience that profoundly shaped her personality, her values, and her career path.
Growing up immersed in humanitarian realities sparked both her interest in psychotraumatology and her commitment to supporting the people who dedicate their lives to this work. She has been involved with CoCreate Humanity since 2022, first as an intern and contributor to the Hum'Animation project with the Gobelins school in Paris, and now as coordinator of an international team of 12 volunteer psychologists.
Géna brings together lived experience and clinical grounding in service of more humane support systems for humanitarian workers.
Noëmie Maclet
Noëmie Maclet is a humanitarian professional specializing in protection, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), and peacebuilding. With over a decade of experience, she has worked on multiple frontlines (Sahel, Central Africa, East and Horn of Africa, Middle East), leading and supporting responses for populations affected by armed conflict, displacement, and severe human rights violations, as well as frontline responders exposed to high-intensity stress. Noëmie has worked across diverse contexts with several INGOs and UN agencies (including Search for Common Ground, OCHA, DRC, NRC) and has developed a strong expertise in the psychological and psychosocial impact of violence, displacement and conflict.
Based in Marseille, France, since June 2024, she has been engaged since June 2025 with CoCreate Humanity as a peer supporter, and also serves as a first aid responder with the French Red Cross. Since 2024, she has been training in clinical psychology and EMDR psychotherapy, and is developing a practice focused on supporting aid workers and frontline professionals facing trauma and chronic stress.
Presentation
Mental Health Peer Support: A Key Link in the Recovery Process of Psychologically Injured Humanitarian Workers
Thursday, April 9 @8am EDT / 2pm CET / 3pm EAT
Every humanitarian mission carries a human cost. And for women aid workers, this cost rarely gets named, let alone addressed.
In this session, Gena Benavente and Noëmie Maclet offer a frank, cross-portrait conversation about the psychological toll of humanitarian work: the cumulative weight, the invisible wounds, and the pivotal moments that led them to join CoCreate Humanity, an organization providing mental health peer support to aid workers
Gena and Noëmie will present how structured and supervised peer support can provide a much-needed window for aid workers to breathe, reflect, and navigate invisible wounds left by their professional commitment.
This session will offer participants a space to acknowledge and discuss psychological harm in the sector, the way it impacts women humanitarian aid workers, and to reflect on what meaningful peer support can look like in practice.