Photo Essay: Perspectives from Sierra Leone's Youth
Throughout the 1990s, West Africa witnessed protracted, intertwined, and mineral-fueled conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Although Sierra Leone’s civil war was initially a battle for control of the government and the diamond fields, the conflict soon devolved into acts of brutality against civilians perpetrated by all sides. After several collapsed peace accords and a failed Nigerian-led intervention, a fragile peace was finally established in 2000 by the British military (Keen 2005). The United Nations assisted with the rebuilding of the country and oversaw democratic elections in 2002. In Sierra Leone, the tragedy left nearly 50,000 dead and scarred the minds, and often the bodies, of the living (Hirsch 2001). Since the war, several local and international organizations have worked to rehabilitate and assist war-affected individuals. One such organization is iEARN Sierra Leone, which seeks to empower war-affected youth through creative expression while also providing training in practical skills. As part of a 2007 collaborative effort between iEARN and the Art Department of the University of the South (USA), I taught a “Literacy through Photography” (LTP) course at the iEARN youth center in Freetown, Sierra Leone. LTP was developed by Wendy Ewald as a means for facilitating critical thought and self-expression by enabling students to portray, and reflect upon, their own lives and communities in photography and writing (Hyde 2001). LTP is a form of art therapy, an approach to rehabilitation that uses the creative process to enable catharsis and healing, especially in traumatized populations (Eaton 2007). During iEARN’s
Conflict and collusion in Sierra Leone
The United Nations' presence in Sierra Leone has made that country a subject of international attention to an unprecedented degree. Once identified as a source of 'the New Barbarism', it has also become a proving ground for Western interventions in the war against terrorism. The conventional diplomatic approach to Sierra Leone's civil war is that it has been a contest between two clearly defined sides. Keen demonstrates this is not the case: the various armed groups were fractured throughout the 1990s, often colluded with one another, and had little interest in bringing the war to an end. This book not only represents a new and innovative approach to the study of war and Third World development and politics generally.
Pulling Out the Thorns: Art Therapy with Sexually Abused Children and Adolescents
This article outlines an approach that integrates art therapy and group process to target areas of need when working with child and adolescent victims of sexual abuse. The paper discusses which art therapy interventions were chosen to address the long- and short-term effects of sexual abuse, and provides theoretical and psychological documentation for such choices. All group participants were evaluated using the Trauma Symptom Child Checklist (Briere, 1995), a common instrument used in trauma centers, before and after their participation in the 10-week group cycle. The results of this exploratory study document a reduction in the symptoms commonly associated with childhood sexual abuse following the art therapy intervention.