By Carrie, Kit, Heak and Sam | Ragamuffin Cambodia Team
“On Valentine's day, we tend to look for love from our loved ones and other people, but we always forget ourselves. For me, Valentine's day is the day that reminds all of us of universal love and the day that enables us to reflect on what we can do to express love, gratitude, and forgiveness to one's self, our beloved persons, and other beings”. Bouyheak Lim, Arts Therapist Ragamuffin Cambodia.
Cambodia was recently described by the Washington Post as being “The country where Valentine’s Day is the most dangerous day of the year” for its high incidence of rape and non-consensual sex. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/12/the-country-where-valentines-day-is-the-most-dangerous-day-of-the-year/
In a rapidly evolving city culture where traditional values and an emergent youth culture are trying to navigate the complexity of change. Finding positive creative channels for expression, self-awareness and choice becomes so important for young people.
Bouyheak Lim from Ragamuffin's ‘Be yourself’ - Arts Therapy Team created and ran a workshop to celebrate love in a different way on St Valentine's Day. “I wanted to provide an opportunity for young adults to use creativity to discover more about who they are and how they really want to live their lives. Discovering strengths, qualities and positive decision making through engaging in an in-depth creative and therapeutic process. This resulted in participants discovering more about who they are and what they can be in the world from the inside out. Creativity naturally empowered them, building esteem, confidence and fostering the skills to cope with the complexity of life decisions. It was such a success we are going to meet on a regular basis“.
In the Be-Yourself Arts Therapy Clinic – children and young people referred to a therapist face a myriad of complex problems from living with HIV, or having suffered abuse or the loss of a significant person, through to managing challenging family and social circumstances. Behaviour is so often a symptom of underlying distress and is so easily misunderstood. Giving these young people the opportunity to explore safely and gently through creativity the disturbing and distressing feelings they have helps to mediate destructive symptoms from challenging behavior acted out to self-harm.
“The arts therapy clinic is a critically important service to both prevent more problems whilst provide specialist treatment and support for those with more severe problems” Serey Samchet Senior Arts Therapist.
Ragamuffin’s music programme Songkites is working on an awareness raising campaign in collaboration with the Be-yourself project to promote positive messages about mental health and well-being for young people in Cambodia. A collective song is being written, recorded and a short film created by young people voicing their thoughts about what it means to ‘Be Yourself’ as a young person in Cambodia. This programme aims to raise confidence self-esteem and awareness.
Ragamuffin continues to also provide training and support for professionals who work with those who suffer. In March we will be providing a training course exploring loss and grief called Bitter Sweet Sorrow.
Learning how (and what) to grieve. Discovering what it is we deeply value and the impact and meaning of loss in our lives
Every loss is to be acknowledged. Every investment made matters. To lose someone or something dear to us is to lose something at the very heart of us, part of what makes our lives meaningful and fulfilled.
Grieving is so important. When the process of grief is blocked we too can become blocked; our pain is then displaced into a range of symptoms both physical and emotional/psychological. It impacts our confidence, our relationships, our personal sense of purpose, vitality and vision.
Grief is as complex as the experience. The loss of an elderly parent in a peaceful death is one we may have had time to prepare for. Sudden tragedy such as, for example, the collapsing of a bridge at the Cambodian water festival in 2010, leaves no time to prepare; nor does assault, suicide or a tragic accident. From wars and natural disasters to the loss of livelihood, every loss and grief, both individual and collective is unique and rarely follows a linear trajectory.
Learning to grieve and to value grief is crucial to psychological and physical well-being.
This is the subject of our training course. We will be using the gentle, powerful art of creativity to guide us in our explorations through an individual and collective reflective process. We will also consider how such insights and therapeutic techniques will apply to our work with others who are in the midst of grief.
Therapeutic training builds capacity of those working in the psychological sector in Cambodia and continues to strengthen the network of partners and multi-disciplinary responses to caring for those who suffer.
On behalf of our clients and the team here, Ragamuffin Cambodia would like to take the opportunity to deeply thank the generosity of supporters donating through Global Giving who are enabling this service to continue to benefit children and young people in Cambodia.
By Carrie Herbert & Serey Samchet | Director and Be-yourself Senior Arts Therapist
By Serey Samchet & Carrie Herbert | Be-Yourself Manager & Supervisor
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