Waldorf News

stART international Emergency Aid for Children: War and Catastrophe — Children Need Art

by ANNE BEAUCHÉ

I met stART international staff during the International Kindergarten Teacher Training at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, in April, 2012. stART international conducts emergency educational missions to post-war countries or to countries after natural disasters: so far more than 45 missions have taken place to countries like Libya, Haiti, Georgia, and Lebanon.

For stART international the most important thing is to reach the children as soon as possible after a disaster and to give them hope, self confidence, and trust again for their daily life, because, as we know, for their parents, the first problem in a situation of an emergency is to find a new roof and some food. The children usually have no choice to overcome their pain by themselves.

Using artistic activities based on Waldorf education and with a trauma therapeutic background—like painting, movement, form drawing and plaster—stART international creates an atmosphere where self confidence can grow and where the children can learn to smile and laugh again.

Barbara Schiller, managing director of stART international, and Christoph Bednarik, team member, gave a lecture about the work of the organization. They invited anybody who wanted to participate in the workshops. There we had to think about how we could work in a camp, what kind of activities we could offer in different situations. Subsequently, I decided to be part of a future mission and join stART International.

A few weeks later, Barbara Schiller, asked me to go for a two week mission to Libya. I’m so happy that I had no doubts when I said yes and signed the contracts. I had to organize my husband and three children’s life so that I could go away.

During several weeks I worked on the mission. I had to learn lots of English songs, English round games, finger games, write lectures in English about a child’s development. I slowly realized that I was not only going to work with children but also with teenagers, and maybe even with teachers.

Finally the D-day arrived! My luggage was ready, full of pedagogical material, a few clothes, and of course lots of scarves, which are very important for a woman if she wants to work in Libya without a barrier between herself and the Libyans she wants to collaborate with.

I took the plane from Paris to Tunisia, our transit city, before getting our visas for Tripoli. We were six members in the team: Francesco our project and mission leader, who is Italian, Christoph is Austrian, Maria is Dutch, Suzanna and Dietmar are German and I am French. Our shared language is English, of course ! Another thing we all have in common is our Waldorf background, as teachers, kindergarten teachers, art therapists and artists with many years of experience.

The next day, we started our work with a puppet play we created all together in the hotel garden, in Tunisia. The original text is in German. We have to translate it into French because we will also work in a small French-speaking school for children from Subsaharan countries who are stranded in Libya. This first common project helps a lot to build up our team and we work as a group. Everybody finds his or her own space in the team and the creating process is magic!

Finally we get the visas and we are able to fly to Tripoli that same day. The three women of the mission were wearing a scarf for the first time, as soon as we entered the plane. We also wore very long skirts and trousers—like 99% of the Libyan ladies. We will need a few days before we are able to live without thinking too much about our scarves…

That same evening we are preparing the first lessons we will give the next day in a school for 14-17 year-old girls. After a short night hearing lots of gun shots, I wake up at six o’clock with the muezzin. I’m very excited. The mission is starting right now!!

We leave our hotel at 8 o’clock in a taxi. It’s my first contact with the chaos in the streets in Tripoli. I’m amazed by the number of empty buildings, which are still under construction but also damaged by the revolution. We drive along Gaddafi’s estate, surrounded by ten walls out of which three are destroyed. Lots of tags and caricatures of the ex-dictator are covering the walls, almost everywhere.

We arrive at the school after 30 minutes. Our work begins with a lecture for the teachers about the benefits of using a lot of artistic activities to be able  to learn and to teach in a nice way, and also to help and develop a healthy child, especially after a big trauma. We invite the teachers to art workshops: one is about free form drawings and the other is about movement.

Those two workshops with the teachers help us immediately to enter in the Libyan culture. Lots of new rules have to be respected, and it’s not so easy! We have to deal with a country where men and women almost never come together, but for our workshops they accept to reassemble. We are happy we have our translators who are there also to help us find the right way to ask things, or to do things and to respect their culture.

After a while, by doing the drawings and the movements, we feel how their confidence is slowly growing. One after the other, we see smiles, we hear laughs and songs, rhythms. Even our translators are playing with us, enjoying to be all together through music and colours. My tears are slowly coming out. I’m so happy to be part of this artistic process where every culture is able to understand each others !

After two hours work with the teachers I finally get in touch with the teenagers. Full of hope and happiness, I enter a class room carrying all my drawing material. The students are there, wearing grey uniforms and pink scarfs. They look at me with curiosity but also full of interest. I introduce myself, and slowly with the help of my translator, begin a dialogue with the girls. We try to speak about the different feelings of the colours, their characteristics. I understand quite quickly that the teenagers are very shy, and that they don’t want to speak too much. They are not used to speak about their feelings, and usually nobody asks them what they think. But I friendly insist, and I ask if they want to express themselves and I let them talk about their experiences of the colours, and I try to create a nice moment only for them.

After a while I invite them to draw a landscape where they could feel happy and free, in  peace, where they could express their feelings by using the colours. Some of them start to draw something on the white page. I’m looking at them, trying to find out the secrets they want to share with me. Hope of freedom, of beauty, of peace. Some other girls can’t get out of their daily lives, and draw the guns and the destroyed city of Tripoli, surrounded by the damaged buildings and iron fences.

One hour later, the landscapes are full of sincerity, reflecting their feelings, their dreams but also their nightmares…the teenagers are so happy to share with me their experiences, that I realize how important is my work here, in this mission, in this part of the world, at that moment. After the lesson, a student comes to me and says, “Mrs Anne, you’re not a teacher! you are a doctor and you take care about our souls!”

Going out of the class room, I suddenly realize that I feel really hot under my scarf, my pair of jeans, my black skirt my socks, my shoes. It has been one hour that I have been working next to the window, and it is almost 35°C. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we leave the school and go back to our hotel to prepare for the next day.

And this is the way we organized every day during two weeks. Every afternoon following our lessons with the teachers and with the students, we all meet for about an hour and a half for the feedback of the day. Everybody can share with the others his ideas, his feelings about his personal work but also about the team work, without any judgment, always trying to do better the next day.

Once we share our feedback we meet on the roof terrace and we begin our team workshop to prepare our next lessons: everybody tries to find ideas, and then shares them with the others. We are dancing, drawing, singing, making movements, drawing geometrical figures, practicing clay…having a lot of fun by creating things all together with enthusiasm.

We try to find the right paper, the right water colors that the people can easily find in Tripoli. We look for clay everywhere in the shops and eventually discover a workshop in a “cave” full of nice pottery and sculptures. The potter sells us some clay and some wonderful mosaics.

We share lots of nice moments all together even if the atmosphere of the country is still very heavy. The revolution of February 2011 is still in the air. Destroyed buildings, burned cars, witnesses of the bomb explosions. The Kalashnikov shots echo in the streets. Every night we hear fighting nearby. And one day, it is so bad, that we cannot reach the school.

But Francesco, our leader, finds always solutions to make our work with the children possible.

The mission is ending with some wonderful work in the school for Subsaharan refugee children. The building is very small, there are about 70 children from kindergarten to class 8. We play a puppet play in the tiny little yard. The children concentrate. The older ones help the younger ones to sit and there is silence. After the first notes of music, the puppet play can begin.

After the play, all the children run to their classroom, hoping to be the first ones to be with the “white strangers” as they call us. I go into the kindergarten. All the children from 18 months to 5 years are sitting behind small tables and learning how to read. I ask the teacher if we can move the chairs and the tables against the walls so that we have a small space to sit in a circle. She is so thankful that I’m here that she agrees immediately.

All the children are now sitting in a circle on the floor. I ask them if they can hold their hands… I understand quickly that it must be the first time for them, because it seems to be very difficult. After a few minutes we start to sing a song about a boat that is traveling through the sea. The children begin to swing, and to sing, and to laugh. And we do lots of finger games, and round games.

After a while, we finally sit on the chairs and I give them some wax crayons to draw. They are so eager to draw that I have suddenly hundreds of drawings. The teacher says that she will cover all the walls with the pictures.

By the end of the morning, we invite all the older children to play in the yard. We dance, we sing, we play. Everything goes very fast, the children laugh a lot, they cheat, they shout. A great moment!!

In the plane back to Paris I see all my memories: the teachers and the children’s faces, the kindergarten teacher from the refugee school, the great stART international team, the different places we went to, smells, sounds, and the words of the teenagers saying that I’m a doctor, so many feelings! It feels like an answer to my aim, the one I want to dedicate my life to.

I’m not a missionary for Waldorf education when I go to Libya, and this is not stART international’s purpose either. But I remember how happy I was in my early and free childhood to be a Waldorf student. Freedom and open-mindedness towards the world which in turn gives me the opportunity to share with the others, to have many different experiences about art, thoughts, visions.

And I  realize how lucky we are to be able to raise our children in a peaceful land.

I want to thank all the stART international team and especially Barbara Schiller, with whom I’ve worked with since October 2012 doing more missions in Libya, in Haiti and in other parts of the world where it is so necessary .

As a non-profit organization, we are always looking for financial help. We really need your support in this way! We are a small organization with lots of enthusiasm, with a very professional and international approach and with a big aim! To assist children in desperate need with the pedagogical and therapeutic means that the Waldorf world has developed over the past 90 years. This is stART´s contribution for the future.

If you are interested, if you want to know more about us or if you can help us—financially or as a possible team member on a mission—please get in touch with us, send an email to b.schiller@start-international.org or to a.beauche@start-international.org or send a donation to our bank account IBAN: DE56 7001 0080 0009 0098 05, BIC/SWIFT: PBNKDEFF

Visit stART international’s website to learn lots more about how art is helping children and families around the world, in places of trauma and damage. The site’s in English, just click on the little Union Jack flag on the left.

Photos are from stART international’s work in different countries including Haiti, Lebanon, Georgia, and Libya.

stART international’s origin:
In September 2006 a team of therapists and pedagogues came together through the “Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e.V.” (registered association of the friends of the art of education according to Rudolf Steiner) with the goal of traveling to the Lebanon and providing support for traumatized children and adolescents.

Five months later the same group went on a second trip to the Lebanon, again under the direction of Barbara Schiller. Members of this initial group went on to seek further training, wanting to professionally organize further emergency missions for youth who have experienced traumatic events. At the end of July 2008 they decided to launch their own association concentrating specifically on the use of art-based therapy and pedagogy: stART international – emergency aid for children.

Sadly, violent conflicts broke out in Georgia only days later and before our association had time to even fully organize itself. Barbara Schiller was asked by Elisabeth Gast to lead an emergency mission to Georgia. In the name of the Elisabeth-Gast foundation, which has lent its support to Georgian artists engaged in social projects for numerous years, our first mission began on September 29, 2008 and was followed by new ones on a monthly basis.