In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a small center called The New Hope Center is set in the eastern city of Goma. This center was created specifically for children who have been displaced one way or other due to wartime activities. These Children experience atrocities such as witnessing massacres of entire villages, rape, child soldiering, and sometimes they are even being forced to kill their own family members. The children who come to the center can be depressed, angry and even suicidal because of what they have gone through.
Around three hundred children and teenagers come to the center with one hundred and thirty trained facilitators that come from Unicef, Norwegian Church Aid and Heal Africa (who tend to the local hospital attached to the center). Once they arrive they become involved with a number of activities: Dancing, singing, music, soccer, foosball, ping-pong, journaling, coloring and drawing. The center has a school to help orphans become educated where they tend to do exceptionally well due to the fact that they feel lucky that they can go to school, especially due to the fact that approximately forty percent of the children in Eastern Congo have the chance to go to school.
Being that the program is open-ended, there are many therapeutic methods they involve the children in. One method in particular is that the facilitators give the children a blank piece of paper and drawing utensils and let them draw whatever they want. The results usually end up being about what trauma the child went through or experienced. According to the national team leader of the New Hope Center, Anita Paden, “We never try to interpret their drawings. They themselves explain to each other. We never force a child to talk or explain. They choose to do so.” The purpose of these therapeutic sessions is to hopefully avoid the children ending up with depression, suicide, stuttering, or not talking at all, becoming bandits, using drugs and/or alcohol, or involving themselves in inappropriate and dangerous sexual behaviors.
After the children have completed their drawings, they are sometimes turned into necklaces by shredding the paper and rolling them into beads then selling the necklaces to help with their tuition. According to Anita Paden the children begin to believe in themselves and will be able to face the rest of their lives with confidence. “Negative things are maybe that people don't think we should talk with the children about grief and death because it could make them cry etc.” However, if the aim of this center's aim is to help the children stay off the streets and set them on the path of a better life, then the methods used there seems to work.
My questions are what do people from our western culture think of an organization like this? Are there negative aspects that can come out of a religious center like this, or should there be more organizations like this? For more information you can go to The New Hope Center’s website. There you can donate money if you feel so inclined or perhaps purchase the necklaces these children create to help them with their schooling.
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