By Carolyn Ronis | Executive Director, ICEHA
Happy Holidays!
Our international team would like to take a moment to thank you again for supporting our project and update you on our progress.
These last few months ICEHA has been given access to several hundred more children who are residing in Displaced Persons Settlements and have expanded our Healing Through Art program with great results. With the addition of our entrepeneurship training, supplies and mentoring for their parents, we have seen the fear of starvation begin to disappear.
Thanks to your generosity, we will be returning to the northern area of Nigeria where Boko Haram has been most active. Although the Nigerian government has been making great progress against Boko Haram, the refugees still live in fear and a degree of danger. Our thoroughly vetted partners will assure our safety so we can deliver basic necessities and emotional healing to help those children who live their daily lives in fear. We will also deiver entrepeneurship training and mentoring to their parents.
One of the children we will be working with in 2017 is Sani. Sani's home was destroyed when his village was set on fire by Boko Haram. Sadly, Sani lost his parents in the fire. The rest of his family survived the fire only to be viciously gunned down in front of him. Fortunately, Sani was rescued by his neighbor and brought to the settlement for displaced persons. We previously provided Sani and his neighbors with food, medical attention, clothing and school supplies until it was just too dangerous for us to continue our work there. We are very excited to see these children again!
ICEHA has also just completed vetting of new partners who will assist us working in government sponsored IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps. The children in these camps are being re-victimized by hunger and assault. Healing Through Art will allow ICEHA to provide another level of protection and supervision for these children while teaching all camp members about empathetic behaviors and how to report and eliminate the abuses.
Healing Through Art not only helps heal the emotional wounds of these children, it also decreases the likelihood that these children will become radicalized and join terrorist organizations in the future. Until Healing Through Art, the only way many of these children had to deal with their fears is by numbing their emotions – making it easier to commit atrocities against others. After escaping terrorists, the children continue to be victimized by lack of basic necessities. For many children, their choice is a painful death from hunger, or join the terrorists. ICEHA provides healing for the body, mind and spirit.
Thank you again for your generosity! We look forward to sharing more photos and stories with you in 2017.
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