Art Therapy - First Sessions

Hey everybody! Monday, March 10th was the first day for art therapy sessions at CARAES at Ndera. Twelve participants were there to assemble, play with and use the Expressive Figures paper toy to create art, all within an hour! Everybody quickly learned how to assemble the pose-able paper doll and I barely needed to advise them how to decorate once they knew to trace the figure.

And each figure was truly expressive! Family members, personal heroes, people at specific events; the mix of characters created was something that naturally arose.  During the first session, we all talked about language, Ikinyarwanda, French and English - the three languages used in Rwanda. Take a look at the results from session 1:

More about session 2 in the next post!

Thank you to Claver, Innocent Sibomana ,Vicente, Mandela, Destinee, and Solange for assisting with the art therapy workshop. All of your help showed the patients at CARAES that we care! Thanks to Holly Phelan-Johnson and Happy Mess Art for donation of the art supplies and the art lesson concept.