The first meeting began with Grade 6A in March 2018. As usual, the first meeting is mostly about the presentation of the psychosocial care program and the facilitators and braking the ice with the children and getting to know them. We asked them to fill out the application for the parents’ approval to join the program. Here a girl took the papers from my hands and distributed them to the other children. And then she took the pencils and distributed them, and took her place among the group and smiled. That girl was Hala.
In the earlier workshops of the program, especially in the photo language workshop, where students identify themselves through the photo. Hala’s participation was concentrated on making comments about her colleagues, her words were mostly strong and offensive and would hurt others’ feelings. Her comments would also be full of sarcasm and disrespect. She did not talk much about herself, or share what she loves and hates.
After nearly two months of workshops, during the drawing workshops to be specific, each child had to draw the thing that makes me happy and the thing that makes him angry. Hala expressed through the drawing her feelings, she her favorite hobby, football, for the thing that makes her happy, knowing that hala plays in the school football team, and she also talked about how losing a game make her angry. Later on, the discussions became deeper, and her interventions turned from offensive and sarcastic comments into expressions of her deep feelings. She expressed the community didn’t respect her hobby, and that many people criticize her because of this “masculine sport,” and summed up her anger with negative criticism of people and arrival in bullying, and said this is what made her become this stubborn person, solid, and not caring about the feelings of others.
Reaching the Diorama workshops, where the discussions and ideas become deeper as it is planned in the program. A more personality of Hala became clearer, and she was able to express more her feelings. As it wasn’t the same Hala anymore. She stopped being that cruel, violent girl that we met at the beginning, on the contrary, she became able to handle her negative feelings she has because bullying, whether because of football or because of the birthmark on her face.
After talking about her diorama, and letting go her feeling about all the things that she, Hala has changed, she became the first participants, talking about her ideas, help her colleagues in the models of clay, coloring with them, volunteering to clean the classroom after the workshop. She stopped offending anyone on her comments or in any other way. She has become part of the group, wants to build colleges in her ideal hometown, wants to be a policeman and guarantee peace and security for all. She is no longer the cruel Hala – as described by her colleague – but a leading, cooperative Hala.