Wed, 10 Feb 2010

Waldorf crisis intervention team leaves for Haiti

KARLSRUHE (NNA) – After four weeks of planning, the 14-member crisis intervention team from the international organisation Friends of Waldorf Education left for Haiti today, Wednesday.

The aim of the deployment is to help children traumatised by the Haiti earthquake to recover by strengthening their self-healing forces through Waldorf educational methods to prevent the development of post-traumatic stress disorders, the organisation said in a press release.

Due to the uncertain security situation in the earthquake zone, the team will camp with other aid organisations in the grounds of an American school or on a site in Leogane 40 kilometres outside the capital Port-au-Prince.

A coordination meeting with the German government’s Agency for Technical Relief in Port-au-Prince on Friday will decide where the Waldorf team is to be deployed, the Friends said. Possible locations were children’s centres or the “Port-aux-petits-Princes” orphanage in the Haitian capital.

Apart from team leader Bernd Ruf and coordinator Kristina Manz, the team consists of two doctors, one psychologist, two art therapists, three teachers of experiential education, two infant teachers, one Waldorf teacher and one eurythmist. The children are to be given the opportunity through movement games, painting, sculpting and modelling to articulate their terrible experiences non-verbally, thus initiating the process of coming to terms with them.

Because of the extent of the disaster, many of the personal and environmental factors which can help people to come to terms with such a trauma had been swept away, the statement said. It was therefore likely that there would be large numbers of deeply traumatised children and young people needing help.

END/nna/cva

Item: 100210-01EN Date: 10 February 2010

Copyright 2010 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/