Justice and Human Rights Germany Project #24495

Rehabilitation Support For Refugees in Germany

by IsraAID

Project Report | Aug 30, 2017
Art Therapy

By Program Staff | IsraAID Germany

Art Therapy for adults

Hamed's Story

Hamed, a 28-year-old refugee from Afghanistan was a participant in the 3 months art therapy program for adults. At the beginning of the program, he was talking about the great hardships he had in dealing with his current situation of living in a refugee shelter and with the process of his asylum request. He mentioned that he arrived in Germany completely alone with no family or relatives, and that in general he felt very lonely. He was complaining that he felt weak and without enough tools to confront the great challenge.

After few months of weekly workshop meetings, something changed - Hamed was excited to be a part of the weekly meetings, and said that the project is making him feel stronger and less alone. He was referring to the ability to share and process his feelings through art and through speaking, and that in general the experience of being in a group was providing him the opportunity for a new social circle outside of the refugee shelter.

Hamed was particularly happy about discovering art as a good tool to help in coping with his difficulties. He shared with us:

“Last week, when I was waiting for a practicum interview in the federal refugee office, I got very stressed. There were many people waiting with me, and the long waiting and uncertainty was not easy. I took my C.V. that I brought with me, and started to paint on the back side of it, letting go of all my worries. Exactly like we do in the workshop. I had so much fun drawing, that I did not noticed time had passed. When I raised my head from the paper, I saw I am alone in the waiting room and was amused how concentrated I was. I knocked on the door and they agreed to interview me although I was a little late”.

Hamed was explaining that with the help of the art therapy process, he could both deal with traumatic memories from his homeland, but also remember the beautiful things he left behind. “It is hard for me to sleep at night,” he said, “but when I look at the photos of painting I created in the workshop I sleep easily.”

Girl Power

As part of our work in the refugee shelters, we also work in a continuous method on weekly basis with small groups. The children who we work with are normally suffering from traumatic experiences that they carry with them from the war in their homelands and from the journey to Germany.

One of the groups we work with is a group of girls between the ages of 8-11, all of whom had to leave their country of origin due to wars and other difficult circumstances. Although they are relieved to be in a safe country, there are social difficulties, language difficulties, challanges adjusting to new schools and family members who were left behind and are missed.

The girls in this group created by our Horizont Program find comfort in each other. They are able to share and discuss painful topics, to listen to the other group members, and offer each other advice based on their personal experiences. They share feelings while taking part in the art therapy workshop, and the themes of conversation also arise from the creative work itself. When the conversation becomes too intense, each can go back to her safe zone of art. The girls became friends through the shared art therapy process, and now also play together outside of the therapy room. It is heartwarming to see how these girls, at such young age, can provide such strong support to one another.

IsraAID’s team in Germany is made up of a mosaic of Arabic, Hebrew, German and English speaking specialists who contribute their global experience, cross-cutting relationships, and linguistic and cultural aptitudes, to create a unique added value necessary for real, sustainable wellbeing and integration in the complex and challenging German environment. Art Therapy is extensively used by IsraAID's specialists to create a common language and a platform for dialog and trust.

Help us continue our work with Hamed, the girls, and many more by donating today! Our work wouldn’t be possible without your support!

Thank you!

Art Therapy for children

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Jun 1, 2017
Updates From a Blossoming Germany

By Gal Rachman | Country Director Germany

Workshop about attitude towards women

After a long cold winter, the real blossoming spring has finally arrived in Germany, and brought with it a feeling of hope to the many refugees who trying to find hope and stability in the new unfamiliar land. We in IsraAID are as always beside them, supporting them in this process in the best way we can. We are happy to share with you some of the latest new programs we launched:

Workshops about Attitude Towards Women

In the last months, different shelters in Berlin has asked IsraAID to support them with the effort of keeping women’s rights and improving the attitude towards women in the shelters. A challenging task that we are happy to commit ourselves to. We have created a vivid group for dialog and discussion with the refugees. Our Arabic speaking social workers used a method of theatrical scene presentation following an open discussion. In that way, desired outcomes were reached, and the participants found it eye-opening and fun. Some of the most reluctant participants were the ones last in the room and did not want to leave. As a result, more dialog sessions are planned in other shelters.

Ongoing Art Therapy Program for Children in Shelters

One of the biggest challenges in refugee shelters is keeping the psychosocial wellbeing of children. After a long survey, IsraAID is approaching this issue through an ongoing art therapy program for children in the ages of 3-12. The program we have developed has been enthusiastically requested by different shelters in Berlin, and our highly motivated team of art therapists is implementing this in close contact with the shelter’s staff.

The long relationship with such shelters is a crucial factor for the child protection and child care processes that ensure the wellbeing of hundreds of children around Germany.

Psychosocial Support Project for Adults - Processing Trauma through Art

When words cannot describe the feelings, one can find an abstract space in which emotions and traumatic experiences can be processed, and mental stress can be relieved. Our new project of art therapy outside of the shelters for Afghani adults is doing exactly that. Together with our Afghani community manager Soma, which herself was a refugee 25 years ago, and our psychosocial support specialists, we have created a three months program to improve the wellbeing of members from the Afghani refugee community. After the graduation of this current group, another two new such programs are planned- for unaccompanied minors and for women. As Soma says: “I simply want to remind them that they are strong individuals and not only “refugees”.

We send a warm thank you for your continued support to our work in Germany - our success is only possible through support from people such as yourself!

Art Therapy for Children

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Apr 4, 2017
A Common Story

By Elin Giertz Andersen | Partnership Officer

Every day, IsraAID’s social workers and therapists meet individuals who have lost everything. They have left their homes, their jobs and schools, and even their families and friends to seek protection in another country. IsraAID’s staff hear the stories of men, women and children who have fled violence and war, that are now suffering from trauma and depression as they struggle to find a sense of purpose in a refugee shelter.

The testimony of Ali, a 33-year-old man from Syria is just such a story: Ali is married and has three children, the oldest is a four-year old girl. On their voyage from Syria to Germany his family was separated - his wife and the two youngest babies fled to Jordan while him and his daughter found their way to Germany. They first lived in a shelter but for the last three months they have been living in their own apartment. Most of the time Ali was very depressed, anxious and full of guilt and sorrow - sometimes he even thought that his daughter would be better off without him.

Ali started meeting IsraAID’s staff regularly as part of an intense counseling process to which he became strongly committed. The staff supported Ali as he struggled to recognize and connect to his feelings, to understand where they came from, and as a result manage them better. In the beginning of the process Ali would still cry most of the time, but after a while things started to change - Ali began smiling more, spending more time outside and meeting friends, enjoying having his daughter by his side, and even started to learn German.

IsraAID’s teams in Germany hold many such workshops and counseling groups for men, women and children. Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees are dealing with the personal and collective trauma from having to flee their countries and now living in this permanent temporary condition in a foreign land. Our social workers and therapists work to create a sense of purpose, an awareness of your own being and surroundings. Through this support individuals like Ali from Syria can better deal with the challenges he is facing and start looking forward to a better tomorrow for him and his family.

IsraAID launched the “Bridges of Hope” program in 2016 in response to the mass influx of asylum seekers to Germany and the many complex challenges involved in their wellbeing and integration. "Bridges of Hope” focuses on providing psychosocial care to these refugees and capacity-building to shelter staff and other relevant stakeholders.

During the spring of 2016, IsraAID extended its operation to Frankfurt, opening a program called Brückenbau – Empowerment of Women Refugees; the program offers psychosocial services to women living in shelters. Women are often the core figure in the family and are especially vulnerable to feelings of depression, guilt and anxiety.

IsraAID runs several other activities in refugee shelters in Brandenburg, Berlin and Frankfurt: offering individual counseling, support groups for children and women, intercultural mediation between the refugees and the shelter staff, German language classes, and shelter services to support the asylum seekers go through the rigorous bureaucratic procedures.

IsraAID Germany is deeply thankful for your contribution to our work – it would not have been possible without it! As the media’s spotlights have turned elsewhere, we stay, but we need your help more than ever to be able to continue our work – thank you!

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