Refugee Art Therapy Project

March 4, 2011

Art therapy services are being provided to refugee students in the Triangle. Many of the children in our groups have spent their whole lives in refugee camps and most have had very little formal schooling. Art is a shared language that helps children communicate, build friendship skills, and address issues of acculturation. The images we have seen in these groups are a combination of cultures, landscapes, and symbols of war and peace. Art therapy is a safe way for the participants to talk about their past experiences and the trauma that they have both witnessed and experienced.

Burma has been in a state of civil strife for the majority of the past half century. The ethnic, political, and religious persecution plaguing Burma has resulted in an average of 10,000 deaths per year for each of the past forty years. The U.S. provides refuge to fewer than 2,000 people from Burma annually; a significant portion of this population resettles to the Triangle area. Most of them are women and children.

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