Psychology & Philanthropy In Action with Dr. Yahaira I. Márquez: The Child Trauma Learning Program

At APF, we’re bringing together the shared power of psychology and philanthropy to create a world where people are healthy, happy, and living with dignity. Through APF Direct Action, we’re supporting innovative interventions, based in psychological knowledge, that directly address pressing needs of communities.

We’re catching up with Dr. Yahaira I. Márquez, APF Direct Action Visionary Grant recipient, whose work demonstrates the power of psychology and philanthropy to turn evidence-based knowledge into meaningful action.

Dr. Márquez’s project, The Child Trauma Learning Program, aims to expand access to evidence-based knowledge, resources, and treatment for childhood trauma in Guatemala. The project focuses on strengthening existing local capacity, and making trauma-focused care accessible, culturally responsive, and sustainable. It also emphasizes the importance of listening and building trust when working alongside local partners.

With support from APF, Dr. Márquez’s team is now entering the next phase of the project: providing structured training and ongoing clinical consultation to Guatemalan clinicians. Through close collaboration with community partners, the work seeks to build lasting capacity while ensuring psychological science is responsive to the people and communities it serves.

Can you tell us a little about The Child Trauma Learning Program, and how your partnerships with Guatemalan universities and government agencies, including the country’s child protection agency (the Procuraduría General de la Nación, or PGN), came together over the past year?

The Child Trauma Learning Program is an initiative designed to expand access to evidence-based knowledge and treatment for childhood trauma in Guatemala, including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). The goal is not simply to provide training, but to strengthen existing capacity by making evidence-based resources more accessible in ways that are linguistically, culturally, and contextually responsive.

The program grew from an immediate request for help. In early 2025, I was contacted by Guatemala’s child protection agency, the Procuraduría General de la Nación (PGN), while the country was responding to a complex child-protection situation involving children and adolescents who had been living within a coercive group. Their multidisciplinary teams wanted support in understanding how trauma might affect these children and how that understanding could inform their evaluations and protection decisions.

In response, I developed a virtual learning experience based on the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s 12 Core Concepts for Understanding Traumatic Stress Responses in Children and Families. That initial workshop brought together 63 professionals from across Guatemala’s child-protection system.

What began as a single request developed into a much larger conversation. PGN helped me identify other professionals and institutions that should be involved, leading to connections with government agencies, universities, the Colegio de Psicólogos, and community organizations. Over the past year, I have approached this process as intentional community-building: listening, learning how the system works, and developing relationships across institutions that may not routinely have opportunities to work together.

That process has shaped the Child Trauma Learning Program into something broader than a TF-CBT training initiative. It is becoming a space where professionals and institutions can learn together, strengthen their response to childhood trauma, and explore what can ultimately be sustained within Guatemala.

In the earlier stages of this work, you led an introductory workshop for professionals connected to Guatemala’s child protection system. What early outcomes or insights have you seen so far, either from that workshop or from the broader groundwork you’ve been laying?

One of the first insights came from seeing who participated. The 63 attendees included psychologists, social workers, legal professionals, investigators, administrative personnel, and professionals from PGN, the Secretaría de Bienestar Social, the Organismo Judicial, CONACMI, and Refugio de la Niñez. They were not simply receiving information; they were asking questions, contributing their perspectives, and connecting what we were discussing to their own work.

Afterward, PGN shared that the trauma framework was helping professionals think about children’s evaluations, judicial protection processes, and their broader response to children and families.

The experience also taught me an important lesson about access. Much of the information we discussed was already publicly available, but availability is not the same as accessibility. Knowledge has to be made usable within a particular language, professional context, culture, and system.

I also began to understand that different professionals need different kinds of trauma knowledge. A psychologist providing treatment has a different role from a judge, investigator, or social worker, but each can influence what happens to a child after trauma. That realization broadened my understanding of the need and of how my particular area of expertise can contribute. It also made clear that no single discipline is sufficient. Meaningful change requires partnership and openness to multidisciplinary work. 

Are there any particular stories or moments from your work with clinicians and partner institutions that stand out to you as illustrating the need for this project?

One moment that has stayed with me occurred when a university partner gave me a book documenting the history of its psychology program—how the program developed, how clinical practice and supervision evolved, and how the institution has worked to connect psychological knowledge with the realities of Guatemalan communities. I saw the gesture as an invitation to understand their history and perspective before assuming what might be useful.

That lesson has continued throughout this work. Across conversations, professionals have consistently described a child-serving system under tremendous pressure. The needs of children and adolescents are extensive, while financial resources, specialized training opportunities, and service capacity are limited.

At the same time, what I have encountered is not a lack of commitment. I have met professionals who are extraordinarily generous with their time, actively seeking ways to strengthen their practice, and working hard to respond with the resources available to them.

For me, that distinction is important. The need for this project is not rooted in an absence of expertise or dedication. It reflects, in part, the gap between the magnitude and complexity of children’s needs and the resources available to meet them.

Funding from the Direct Action Visionary Grant will support the next phase of this project: structured training and ongoing clinical consultation for Guatemalan clinicians. How will this funding allow you to expand the capacity of this work?

The grant makes a level of training possible that would otherwise be difficult to access. PGN was very candid with me that financial resources for the type of intensive training I was proposing were simply not available.

TF-CBT cannot responsibly be learned through a single workshop. Developing competence requires structured training, ongoing clinical consultation, opportunities to apply the model with children and caregivers, and time to integrate new skills into practice. The Direct Action Visionary Grant will allow us to provide that experience to an initial cohort of 24 Guatemalan psychologists.

Just as importantly, the funding allows me to deepen the relationships surrounding the training. Virtual communication made the initial connections possible, but I have learned that meaningful systems-level collaboration requires more. In-person work will allow us to have deeper conversations about barriers, institutional capacity, sustainability, and what different organizations might contribute in the future.

Being present and showing up also carries important meaning, particularly when working across cultures and addressing topics as sensitive as childhood trauma. It is one thing to say that we are committed to supporting workforce development; it is another to demonstrate that commitment through our presence, our consistency, and the different ways we participate in the work.

In that sense, the grant supports both clinical capacity and relationship capacity. We need both if this work is going to last.

You’ve described this project as intentionally paced, prioritizing trust-building over rapid rollout. How has this approach benefitted the research process?

Taking time has changed both my understanding of the context and the questions I am asking as a researcher.

I have learned about differences in professional training and supervision, financial barriers, institutional structures, and the historical and sociopolitical context in which collaboration with an outside researcher takes place. Those factors are not peripheral to implementation; they help determine whether an intervention can actually work within a system.

I have also learned something very important: the professionals I am working with were not looking for TF-CBT. Many had never heard of it. I am the one who comes to this partnership with extensive knowledge of the treatment and access to its research, developers, training, and consultation infrastructure.

That creates a responsibility. Evidence demonstrating that TF-CBT works elsewhere does not automatically establish that it will be useful or sustainable in Guatemala.

The evidence tells me TF-CBT is worth exploring. It does not give me permission to assume that it belongs in Guatemala. That has to be learned in partnership with Guatemala.

Intentional pacing gives us the opportunity to do that.

It has also allowed my own institution to develop the infrastructure needed to support this work responsibly. For example, our Institutional Review Board does not routinely manage a large volume of international research. Allowing sufficient time to work through a protocol involving international collaboration has been both helpful and instructive for everyone involved. In that sense, the learning and capacity-building are occurring on both sides of the partnership.

As a follow up, do you have any advice or tips for building trust within the communities that we work with?

Listen before you propose—and continue listening after you think you understand.

Trust should not be expected simply because we arrive with good intentions, academic credentials, resources, or an evidence-based intervention. People have every right to ask who we are, what we want, whether we understand their reality, and whether what we are proposing will actually benefit them.

Early in this process, I sent a draft funding proposal to my colleague at PGN and asked him to critique how I had represented Guatemala and the needs I was trying to address. I told him that it was very important to me to describe the problem accurately and professionally while preserving the dignity of his country, its people, and the children we hoped to serve. He sent back comments, and I made changes.

Trust is built through many actions like that: showing up, listening, keeping commitments, inviting correction, staying connected during periods of waiting, acknowledging what you do not know, and sharing your expertise without assuming that it is more valuable than the expertise already present in the community.

Trust is not something we establish before the work begins. Trust is part of the work.

Looking ahead, what are the long-term goals of this project?

Sustainability has been an aim at every stage of this project.

The first cohort of 24 psychologists represents a starting point. Through their experiences, we can begin to understand what TF-CBT implementation actually looks like in Guatemala: what clinicians find useful, what is feasible, what barriers emerge, what may need to be adapted, and what happens as the treatment is used with children and caregivers.

Research is essential to that process. I want to return to Guatemalan institutions not simply with the statement that TF-CBT is evidence-based, but with evidence from what we accomplished together: what we did, what we learned, what the data show, what was difficult, and what participating professionals believe should happen next.

From there, the question becomes: What can we build together?

My hope is that the relationships we nurture, the connections we create, and the outcomes we document will help local institutions determine what they want to invest in, integrate, and sustain. Ultimately, success would mean that the capacity developed through this project increasingly belongs to the people and institutions in Guatemala rather than depending on me or on a single grant.

There is also a broader goal. I want this work to draw attention within the global scientific community to the importance of investing in Spanish-speaking countries. Evidence-based science needs to become more accessible across linguistic and cultural contexts, but the exchange must go both ways. We also need to learn how professionals and communities in these countries are already responding to challenges that, at their core, are shared human problems.

How do you plan to use the outcomes from this work to influence broader conversations, policies, or interventions?

My vision for this work is ultimately global. I want Guatemala to be represented in international conversations about childhood trauma and implementation not simply as a recipient of knowledge developed elsewhere, but as a source of knowledge from which the rest of us can learn.

As part of the pre-implementation work, I held a series of Listening Across Borders conversations with colleagues from nine countries, including Guatemala. We discussed childhood trauma and violence in each country, how different systems are responding, what has worked, what remains difficult, and where there may be opportunities for collaboration.

We discovered shared difficulties, but also challenges unique to each setting. Most importantly, I saw a tremendous desire among professionals to listen to and learn from one another.

I hope the outcomes of the Child Trauma Learning Program contribute to that exchange. By documenting the implementation process and sharing what we learn, we can bring Guatemalan experiences and expertise into scientific and professional conversations that may influence future interventions, collaborations, and, eventually, policy and investment.

Knowledge should not travel in only one direction. Guatemala can benefit from what the international evidence base has taught us, and the international community should also learn from what Guatemala teaches us.

From your perspective, what does Direct Action in psychology look like for the communities you work with?

For me, meaningful impact may start in the laboratory, but it cannot stay there.

Psychology has generated extraordinary knowledge about childhood trauma. Yet knowing that something works and ensuring that people can actually access and use that knowledge are very different things. Direct Action happens in the space between the two.

It requires leaving our familiar academic and clinical environments and entering into genuine relationships with the people and systems where that knowledge must function. It means sharing what we know with humility while also asking, “What do you know that we need to learn?”

Then we have to act on what we hear.

I cannot solve the challenges facing children and families in Guatemala by myself, and one grant cannot solve them either. But I can be part of the solution. This grant can be part of the solution. The psychologists participating in the program and the institutions that choose to collaborate can each be part of the solution.

To me, Direct Action means refusing to allow valuable psychological knowledge to stop at publication. It means working to transform knowledge into access, relationships, capacity, and meaningful change.

Do you have any advice for future APF Direct Action Visionary Grant applicants or other researchers who want to create a direct and meaningful impact?

Start with the problem, not with your intervention.

As researchers, we spend years developing expertise, and it is natural to begin seeing problems through the lens of what we know. But communities do not necessarily need the intervention we happen to know how to provide.

Find the people already doing the work. Ask what they are seeing and what has already been tried. Learn about knowledge and innovations that may exist locally but have never reached the international literature. Ask communities what they are proud of, not only what they need. And treat relationships as an essential part of the work rather than simply a means of gaining access to it.

I would also encourage researchers not to become paralyzed by the size of the problem. We do not have to solve everything to contribute something meaningful. Identify where your knowledge, skills, relationships, and resources can genuinely contribute. Do that piece well, document what you learn, and create opportunities for others to join.

Meaningful change often begins much smaller than the problem it hopes eventually to influence.

Do you have any advice for future APF Direct Action Visionary Grant applicants or other researchers who want to create a direct and meaningful impact?

This work is deeply meaningful to me. At the CARES Institute, I have had the privilege of serving families who immigrated to the United States from Guatemala, including families who left their communities seeking safety from violence.

I think of one family whose caregiver faced such serious threats from interpersonal violence that leaving became an extraordinary act of protection. The family undertook a difficult journey to the United States seeking safety and the possibility of raising the children outside that violence. 

Their privacy is important to me, so I will not share the details of their experience, but stories like theirs stay with you.

It is an honor now to have the opportunity to contribute to improving access to trauma services in the country of origin of families I have served here—to help make things better for children and families who are living their lives and writing their futures there.

I believe every child, wherever they are born, deserves the opportunity to grow up in peace and free from violence. When violence and adversity enter a child’s life, that child deserves access to care that can help them not only survive what happened, but heal and build a life worth living.

Working in childhood trauma is difficult. What sustains me is everything I encounter alongside the trauma: connection and beauty, professionals who continue to show up, colleagues across countries who want to learn from one another, caregivers who fight for their children, prayer, and, above all, children who demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to heal. Their resilience reminds me that even in the presence of tremendous adversity, there is also hope.

The resilience of children is medicine. They are the hope, and they are the reason for the work.

That is also why I am so grateful for the Direct Action Visionary Grant. It supports the kind of work that allows psychology to move beyond our laboratories and publications, build relationships across borders, and work alongside communities to turn what we know into something that can improve children’s lives.

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