With a third year of funding from the Martín-Baró Fund, the Mobile Expressive Therapies Program will continue to provide support towards psychosocial wellbeing to children, adolescents, parents, teachers, and volunteers in the West Bank. Such individuals continue to experience fear, isolation, and multiple other challenges of living under Israeli occupation. Through providing art-based therapy as well as teaching individuals about the multiple psychosocial effects of living under constant threat, the program has succeeded in enhancing local communities’ resources for coping with stress and anxiety.

During the previous year, the Mobile Expressive Therapies Program worked in Bedouin villages, which are among the most impoverished, marginalized, and neglected Palestinian communities. The program provided expressive art therapy training sessions and workshops in different locations around the villages including in kindergartens and in tents. In total, approximately 140 children, 4 teachers and 11 volunteers received the program’s services. The program also collaborated with 12 women from Kufu-Aqab, Ramallah, and the Qalandiya Refugee camp. Some of these women are widows, some have children with disabilities, and some have lost children in clashes with the Israeli military.

Finally, the program worked with 12- and 13-year old students in the UN school in the Qalandiy refugee camp. Some of these young teenagers have been identified as being hyperactive or as having learning difficulties, while others were recently released after spending a year in an Israeli prison. Since 2015, the program has reached communities located in remote villages and underserved refugee camps. In 2017 they will continue to help individuals, especially children, prioritizing those who are challenged by emotional, behavioral, and/or learning difficulties through art-based therapy.