The Safe House: An Enclave of Peace and Hope

When refugee girls arrive at RefuSHE's Safe House, our top priority is to provide them with shelter, safety, and protection. Once these basic needs have been met, we go a step further and address the unique mental health needs of each girl in our care.

All the girls and young women in our Safe House program attend mental health counseling with a therapist to process and heal from past trauma. RefuSHE takes a comprehensive approach to mental health, rooted in the foundations of our holistic model. Talk therapy, although incredibly useful and effective, is only one approach to healing trauma. At RefuSHE, we also incorporate movement and creative arts therapy into our treatment plans. Our Yoga and Cottage Skills Programs work with both the mind and the body, while also helping to forge a sense of safe community from which refugee girls can draw comfort and support.

Cottage skills are traditional skills such as knitting, beading, hairdressing, cooking, and baking which are practical but also therapeutic. Safe shelters often provide protection, but residents have an abundance of unstructured, idle time which can fuel feelings of depression or hopelessness. Safe House residents enjoy expanding their skillsets through the Cottage Skills program while bonding with their housemates and processing trauma through creativity.

Incorporating creative arts therapies like cottage skills training into RefuSHE’s mental health work has helped refugee girls improve cognitive and sensory-motor functions, develop self-esteem and self-awareness, build emotional resilience, enhance their social skills, and reduce and resolve conflicts and distress. Much like the therapeutic nature of the handicraft work in the Artisan Collective, RefuSHE’s Cottage Skills Program employs repetitive motion and rhythmic crafts to keep the hands and minds of Safe House residents occupied and stress-free.

When girls exit the program, they leave equipped with skills which allow them to start up a petty trade business as well as increased self-worth and independence as individuals. These skills can also help break the cycle of domestic violence for refugee girls as they now have the tools to support themselves and are less likely to return to their perpetrators. Some girls exit the program and aim to earn a living from handicrafts while others may run a household with children and a family to care for. Wherever their path takes them, residents leave RefuSHE’s Safe House with the practical skills and self-confidence to help them navigate their next chapter.