Thu, 28 Jan 2010

Waldorf crisis intervention team to head for Haiti

KARLSRUHE (NNA) – The international Waldorf organisation Friends of Waldorf Education is to send a crisis intervention team to Haiti to help traumatised children there come to terms with their terrible experiences.

“The Friends of Waldorf Education intend to send a crisis intervention team, consisting of educationalists, psychologists, therapists, physicians and translators, to the disaster area in mid-February to stimulate the children’s natural self-healing processes and counter possible delayed reactions,” the group said in a statement.

The current severe problems in Haiti were placing about two million children at acute risk, the organisation said. Separation, the loss of families, physical injury, the direct confrontation with death and destruction everywhere generated psychological traumas which would affect the children for the rest of their lives.

Of all the natural disasters, earthquakes were particularly disturbing because the apparently firm and stable element of the earth was experienced as unreliable and, indeed, life-threatening, the statement added.

The crisis intervention teams of the Friends of Waldorf Education have already gathered positive experience in previous deployments in Lebanon, China, Gaza and, most recently, the earthquake in Indonesia.

Despite the team members working on a voluntary basis, the Friends of Waldorf Education say they urgently need donations to help cover the approximately 30,000 euro (£26,000, US$42,000) cost of the deployment and have appealed for donations (to donate, see below).

The concept of the human being underlying Waldorf education, its understanding of psychological processes and its many different rhythmical and artistic methods can release psychological strain and strengthen the human being from within.

Structured phases of teaching and play, free play and phases of creative and artistic activities are intended to release and activate personal resources which have been buried by the trauma. Waldorf education in crisis situations makes use in particular of therapeutic modelling, painting and drawing therapy, eurythmy as well as other Waldorf methods which allow the affected children to articulate their experiences in a non-verbal way.

END/nna/cva

To donate: go to www.freunde-waldorf.de/en/ and follow the “Online donation” link under “Donate and Help”.

Item: 100128-01EN Date: 28 January 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/