The project in summary
Art-Therapy sessions for refugee and migrant children located in the Reception Centers in Málaga (Spain).
The overall goal of the Art Therapy project is to increase the resilience of the asylum seekers. More specifically, this intervention aims to:
- help asylum seekers to recover from their traumatic experiences, build resilience, regain self-esteem and integrate into the community;
- leave lasting impact by training local care providers, who are exposed to fatigue and secondary trauma through their work and enable them to implement basic arts therapy techniques in their own practice;
- offer caregivers a new and innovative tool to modulate/reduce stress and increase their Self-Care.
Beneficiaries during the project period (February 2020 – July 2022)
The project reached 209 migrants and refugees (including 65 Ukrainian refugee minors and adults), of which:
- 75 children and adolescents (5-16 ages);
- 77 young adults (18-24 ages);
- 57 adults (+25);
- 24 caregivers of The Spanish Red Cross.
Between February 2020 and July 2022, The Red Pencil (Europe) in collaboration with The Spanish Red Cross, with Alta Mane support, developed the following activities:
- Organized and ran 210 group art-therapy sessions for 49 refugee and migrant children (5-14 ages), 26 adolescents (11-16 ages), 77 young adults (18-24 ages), and 57 adults (25+), located inside the Reception Centers and Independent Living Houses managed by The Spanish Red Cross in Málaga (Spain);
- Activated the Train-The-Trainer (TTT) program focused primarily in using Art Therapy as a tool for Staff’s self-care and modulation of stress at work and intended to provide partner staff with new tools using Arts Therapy for enriching their interventions with asylum seekers and refugees, and organized 12 training sessions for 24 caregivers of The Spanish Red Cross;
- In collaboration with The Spanish Red Cross, has conducted a pre-post evaluation process, to check on progress on the young beneficiaries and make appropriate recommendations for future program planning, as well as the research study “Art Therapy Intervention addressing migratory grief and resilience for teenagers asylum seekers in the context of COVID sanitary crisis”.
In 2023, RPE intends to replicate the inclusive therapeutic approach, already adopted during Phase II, by combining “standard” art-therapy sessions for Single Men, mainly coming from Africa, to improve their Life Skills and foster the development of Self-Care Skills, together with “First-Aid” art-therapy sessions for Ukrainian migrant and refugee minors and their young mothers, to regulate their emotions and enhance the development of coping mechanisms.
