Walking with Emotionally Wounded Children

Trainer profile:
1. Dirk Coetsee was born in Pretoria, grew up in Stellenbosch, and attended Stellenbosch University, where he completed a BA (Hons) in Psychology, BTh and MTh. (with Pastoral Care as subject).
He was ordained as minister in the Uniting Reformed Church, Riebeek Kasteel (South Africa), where he served for 12 years. In 1999, he joined Petra Institute with his family, where he has served as Training Facilitator, Managing Director and currently as Manager: Strategic Partnerships. He helped with the development of our Walking with Wounded Children (a short course equipping participants to support emotionally wounded children and families) as well as other training programmes.
He also assists with the planning and facilitation of strategic planning workshops, advocacy meetings, seminars and webinars and different forms of training courses in various African, Middle Eastern, East European and Asian countries. He is involved with informal research, and has published some academic articles.
Motivating Dirk is his passion to see people around the world benefit from his efforts to build strong families and healthy children.

Co – Trainers
2. Odette Davids was born in South Africa and, as a young adult, held various positions in several countries. She always had a passion for children, and in 2011, joined a Nigerian organisation serving orphans. To further equip her for child counseling, she attended Petra Institute training, which eventually led her to join the organisation as a facilitator in 2013. She has vast experience working with orphans and vulnerable children, as well as training adults. Amongst others, she lived in a children’s home in Indonesia for 7 months and trained teams in East Africa, South Sudan, and Mongolia, where she plans to return soon. Odette regards children as her most important teachers and is still inspired by the incredible spiritual strength of children going through tough times in communities across the world.

3. Elaine Kwok
Elaine holds a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Singapore Bible College. She is currently a Children Pastor in a local church in Singapore. In 2005, she completed leadership and mentoring training with Petra Institute, South Africa, where she has served as her Training Facilitator for training programs both locally and overseas. Elaine has been working with children and their parents since 1993. She is passionate to see families both young and old learning and growing together. Her vision is to see children being well developed in their formative years, raised and released into their fullest potential. Elaine desires to bring good training beyond the Singapore shore to countries that will benefit from her training.

4. Priscilla Salomon enjoys teaching and equipping people of various ages. She serves as a pastoral staff in her local church where she oversees Children’s Ministry. Another passion of hers is to develop curriculum and training materials. She has conducted camps, workshops, and trainings for children and adults from diverse settings in Singapore, Nepal, Myanmar, Indonesia, and India along with her husband Solomon, and her team. This has built her cross-cultural understanding and application. Her journey of life and experience include completing her Bachelor of Science. After volunteering at Oasis, India and working with slum children involved in the begging and trafficking trade, she decided to equip herself to address deep-rooted issues in communities. She completed her Master of Art degree locally in Singapore and served for twenty years in her local community. During this time, she completed another two Master degrees. She has also trained under Dirk and Taleta Coetsee (Petra Institute, South Africa) for the Walking With Wounded Children course, helping as a trainer with the team in Singapore.