MEX 10 - ART AND PLAY: CREATIVE WORKSHOPS FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN
Project Location
The southern border of Mexico is full of dreams, nightmares and realities for many women, men, children, adolescents and young people who cross these places every day. Tapachula, in the Chiapas region, is one of the most important border cities in southern Mexico, a place known to many migrants from Central America, the Caribbean, South America and extra-continental nationalities (Africans, Asians).
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2019 Mexico recorded the arrival of over 450,000 people, who crossed the border between that country and Guatemala to seek asylum or continue on their way to the United States; most of them are entire families, young men and women with children fleeing from situations of violence, oppression, poverty and persecution by their governments or organized crime.
In this reality, we Comboni Sisters live as a community by walking with the migrants we meet in the various shelters with which we collaborate, making our time available for personal and group listening, working in particular with women, young women and adolescents.
Project description
It is well known that through play and art, each person can express their emotional, physical, relational, social and psychological state, sharing their story and everything they carry in their heart at the moment they find themselves. This is especially true for children and adolescents.
This approach allows, through play and creative art, to offer children and adolescents tested by the migratory path, a recreational space that allows them to know and value themselves and the interaction with others. Play and movement help reduce stress in children and develop their potential for interaction, skills and leadership. Art, expressed through small manual works, helps children and adolescents to be more aware of themselves and to express their dreams, feelings and emotions.
The creative process helps those who participate to trust their emotions and feelings, welcoming them and working on them artistically to be able to give them voice and space in a context of mutual trust and acceptance of diversity of expression.
Through shapes and colors it is possible to create a bridge between what they have inside and what makes up the external reality, harmonizing both dimensions to live the waiting time with greater awareness and recognition of themselves, both in relation to the reality that surrounds them and to the people with whom they relate.
Objectives
- Allow children and adolescents to reduce the stress caused by migration through play and movement
- Create awareness in young people of their own experiences, welcoming their emotions and feelings through art therapy
Beneficiaries
Direct: 1,200 people: 720 children and 480 migrant adolescents divided into weekly groups of 15 girls/boys and 10 girls/boys
Indirect: families and the host community
Referent sister of the project: Sr. Tighisti Alazar
Project's costs