The healing power of art in Haiti

By Nichole Cirillo | Read it on Boston.com

A Haitian teenager displays the painting he completed in an afterschool arts program.
Photo © 2010 by Nichole Cirillo/UUSC.

Nichole Cirillo, a resident of Cambridge, is manager of experiential learning programs for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, an international human rights organization based in Cambridge. She recently traveled to Haiti, where UUSC is developing a program to organize volunteers to help earthquake survivors reclaim their lives and livelihoods.

We arrived at Aprosifa (Association for the Promotion of Integral Family Healthcare) late on a sultry afternoon. In less than an hour's time the sky would funnel wildly into a sudden tornado that would sweep through the courtyard, ripping the roof off one of the out-buildings. But for now, it was sunny and calm.

We were immediately greeted by Roseanne, the director of the center which began 17 years ago as a free health clinic, serving the community of Carrefour Feuilles in Port au Prince. She takes us through the tiny, cramped rooms of the clinic which are filled with old, used furniture and ancient medical equipment. It reminds me for a moment of a child's play room, the diminutive blocks of cabinetry and tables, scattered with papers, and boxes of medicine.

From the second floor come the loopy shouts of teenagers, some 40 of them working in a warren of rooms. In the first is a group of boys hunched over thick pads of white sketching paper. They hold up their work and smile as we enter. One boy lifts his drawing up next to his face as we snap a photo. "I am Rembrandt," he says impishly as his friends swat their pads at him, breaking into a round of laughter.

There are other rooms, places where kids paint and sculpt, using materials they scoop off the streets. In the largest room, a space at the front of the building, a group of girls huddles over what looks like a heap of trash, the plastic detritus given to them by market women. From it, they will weave bags and purses in what Aprosifa calls the Little Genius Project.

In Haiti, jobs are scarce and colleges and universities are nearly impossible to get into, much less afford. There are no technical schools, and therefore, very few opportunities. Gangs, violence, are everywhere, as they are in many urban centers around the world.

Several years ago, Roseanne was conducting a gender workshop, a session where she talked to young men and women about gang violence. As they went around the room telling their stories, it became clear that every one of the teenagers had been a victim of gang violence.

They realized, also, that most trouble occurred after school and on weekends, when the teens were idle, with nowhere to go, and nothing to do. She realized that if she could provide them with a safe space and an engaging activity to occupy them during these times, she might just keep them from harm.

Today, there are nearly 70 kids who come for an average of two hours a day to work on art projects. Aprosifa provides the supplies, the space, and the training. The students can sell what they make, and keep the profits.

She has found that creating art heals in a way that the health clinic downstairs could never do. If you ask the teenagers in Aprosifa's program what they feel about the earthquake that destroyed their country, most of them go numb, unable to put into words the pain and misery of a life spent in the wake of such unimaginable ruin.

But if you ask them to draw, or to paint, what they feel, you get explosive colors, a palate of fire-hot reds, startling oranges, and jungle-lush greens. The colors, the images, begin to tell the story that these teenagers are still struggling to tell with words.

"Each of these pieces is about what has happened to them," Roseanne explains, pointing to a row of panel-sized paintings leaning against the wall. "Things that maybe they cannot yet speak about. But the art speaks for them."

For more information about UUSC's Haiti Earthquake recovery program, visit www.uusc.org/haiti. To learn how to contribute to Passport, email Patricia Nealon at pnealon@globe.com.