Art Therapists Helping Children Deal
with Trauma of Earthquake and Aftermath
CHART -- Communities Healing through ART -- has teamed up with Haitian Ministries to send teams of art therapists from around the world to Haiti to help children suffering from the effects of the January 12th earthquake.
A second team of three therapists -- two from France and one from Canada -- arrived in Port-au-Prince on June 22 for more than two weeks. They are seeing children at programs supported by Haitian Ministries, including Paula Thybulle's orphanage and Madame Samson's meal program. They will also see students in the scholarship program (Tierney-Tobin).
The first team travelled to Haiti in May. As now planned, different teams will travel to Haiti over the next year to work with children and to train others to work with children. The art therapists also hope to work with Haitian artists.
CHART was co-founded in 2005 by Dr. Baxter Garcia as an organization that could recruit artists and art therapists to provide psycho-social relief following the South Asian tsunami. Dr. Garcia, a Connecticut resident and now an independent consultant in software engineering, is director of CHART. CHART co-founder and the organization's clinical director, Gaelynn Wolf Bordonaro, is director of the art therapy program at Emporia State University.
See: www.chartaid.org for more information.