Year
2007
National
Hariri Foundation partnered with Mercy Corps and Aman Youth Association to implement the “Healing by Art” project, which aimed to teach community members and stakeholders how to integrate creative expressive arts into their work with children and adults to help them recover from the wounds of traumatic experiences. The project’s key concepts comprised the promotion of art as a process that transforms images of oneself from being victimized to being in control, from being helpless to being powerful, and from being destructive to being constructive. Partners provided a training of trainers to educational professionals, conducted over six workshops across Lebanon and covering themes such as creating a safe and supportive environment, setting the mood for free expression, and gathering resources.
The project demonstrated the effect of art on emotional healing, enhanced growth, and optimal learning, benefiting both the trainees and those they teach in the future. 120 Lebanese and Palestinian educational professionals in South Lebanon and North Lebanon participated in the training, and students indirectly benefiting from the trainings of their direct educators was estimated at 6,000 children.
