Art Therapy In Iraq - Gold Award

Written by: Guest writer, Paige C. Blackburn

A Girl Scout from Troop 637, traveled to Iraq for her project to help refugee children. JaneBatson Mason, traveled to Iraq to help children of the Yezidi people when she was just 13. Displaced as a result of genocide, many Yezidi people live in refugee camps, one of which JaneBatson visited: Camp Sharia. Raising money for the trip all by herself,

JaneBatson went to Iraq with a purpose: to introduce refugee children to the wonders of art therapy, a creative technique that allows children to understand and communicate their emotions in a non-verbal way. The project was greatly successful, allowing children to share, cope with, and begin to heal their traumas. Now aged 17, JaneBatson has earned a Gold Award for her hard work!

JaneBatson Mason is a teenager from Edisto Island, South Carolina. She was just 13 years old when she began a project she called “The Yezidi Refugee Children’s Art Project.”

Collaborating with the “Love for the Least” organization, JaneBatson formed a plan to travel to Iraq. She raised money to pay for the trip, as well as for art supplies, classroom heating, and food for the children—all by selling soup and taking donations.

As she planned her trip, JaneBatson decided she would help one population in particular: the Yezidi, or Yazidi people. Members of this religious group have been coming to refugee camps in droves since 2014, when ISIS began exercising a calculated genocide on the Yazidi population.

According to JaneBatson, “about 400,000 Yezidi people are living as refugees today.” Many of these refugees are children. Stripped of their homes and exposed to the violence of war, these children have experiences and memories they do not have the emotional intelligence to manage in a healthy way. In fact, when JaneBatson arrived at Camp Sharia, over one-third of the 40 Yezidi children JaneBatson would be working with had been diagnosed with depression.

“The trauma inflicted by the 2014 genocide as well as the mental strain of living with a refugee status… can cause severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety amongst refugee populations. This often goes unaddressed, as aid workers prioritize food and shelter over mental health…. Providing creative outlets” should help “address trauma caused by the genocide,” says JaneBatson. Because many refugee camps do not have the funds to improve their resident’s mental health, JaneBatson wanted to help. She reasoned that offering these children a way to understand and communicate their trauma non-verbally would allow them to heal. This led JaneBatson to create an art therapy curriculum.

Working with licensed therapists, doing research, and spending 40 hours learning Arabic, JaneBatson prepared for her trip to Iraq. She put together several art lessons for the children, organizing them into five sections: “My Past,” “My Journey,” “My Home,” “Myself,” and “My Future.” These art projects were designed to increase emotional maturity and self-understanding about the children’s difficult life experiences. They were also a way for the children to find meaning in their own stories.

As JaneBatson put it, “the most vulnerable among us, children, suffer the most when war becomes the solution to problems created by adults.” She continued, “I wanted to give a voice to the children who had lost theirs in the aftermath of war. To provide them with a way to tell their story, to spark creativity, and to create a sense of purpose.”

Even after she got home, JaneBatson had plans to continue the outreach of her project. Though COVID-19 kept many of these plans from happening, JaneBatson was still able to leave her curriculum and supplies behind for further use at Camp Sharia. She also made a cookbook which, alongside her family’s recipes, shared the stories of many Yazidi children.

Though this project posed some major challenges for JaneBatson, from funding to resources, pandemics to self-discipline, JaneBatson did everything she could to help these Yezidi children.

The project overall was a major success, and an admirable, awe-inspiring job on JaneBatson’s part.

All of this hard work shows JaneBatson’s exemplary dedication to rehabilitating the world. The depth of commitment and substantial application of self necessary to complete a project so vast is something few teenagers can manage. That JaneBatson does all this with enthusiasm, passion, and great responsibility.

A lot of management was necessary for the role JaneBatson took on during her project. Organization, planning, and delegation were key, and overcoming challenges was difficult for her at first. But JaneBatson learned quickly how to be a successful team member, leader, and teacher.

All the work was worth it, in the end. JaneBatson’s art therapy curriculum allowed about 40 Yazidi children the opportunity to retell their own stories. Many of the children were eager to share what had happened to them. The stories they told were full of pain and heartbreak, but you can tell that they were happy to have a way to express themselves—and someone to listen to them.

The children weren’t the only ones who learned from JaneBatson, though. The refugee workers took something from this experience, too. Many of the workers were hesitant about her project at first, JaneBatson explained. But with some guidance, she helped them “recognize the need for a more thorough program to address trauma.” Where once there was very little awareness about mental health, JaneBatson left Camp Sharia with new knowledge, new skills, and the chance to do her project again, so the workers can help more children the same way she did.

Now 17 years old, JaneBatson has earned her Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive, for her work on this impressive global endeavor. She went above and beyond the idea of “global impact” in her travels, connecting communities across the world. For these reasons, everyone here at Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina is thrilled to see JaneBatson Mason earn her Gold Award for her work on “The Yezidi Refugee Children’s Art Project.”

You can review the published Art Therapy Curriculum here.