SuperArte Honduras

Editorial de Honduras this week, le 6/03/06


Voices of the ignored

Young people have always been one of the least cared for sectors in Honduran society. But there are those who do care - like the NGO Medicos Sin Fronteras. The people who turn to them for help lack attention but what they do have is interest and dedication. They all use different forms of defence mechanisms, such as aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and obsessions. These are many times the result of drug abuse but also of an uncaring society.

These persons have few places to turn with their problems. There is no space for them in the classrooms since our teachers aren't prepared to care for them. Even the greatest teacher would have a difficult task meeting their needs.

It is easy to look down upon the behavior of drug addicts, especially since we tend to have an elitist outlook on society, but before we define the people on the bottom of the ladder we should first try to get to know them.

Recently Medicos sin Fronteras and the French Alliance in Tegucigalpa organized an exhibition where young people from the streets of Comayagüela gave us the chance to get to know them through their artwork. Here are some of their thoughts, scribbled on the wall of their Comayagüela workshop:

"We can do better than what we are doing at the moment - it all depends on whether we get support. I would like to study, stop taking drugs and learn something useful. I have a one and a half year old daughter and she is very important in my life but if I don't do nothing, what can I give her?" Dany, 22 years.

"On the street I have friends that defend me when someone wants to hit me. In the future I want to work with anything but not in a brothel." Wendy, 14 years.

"I am honest, people know I've never stolen anything. I want to learn to play the drums, to be a performer. I know I could learn something, use my brain." Walter, 16 years.

"I ask people not to be afraid of me and that they don't treat me bad. I'm just a clown, but not the clown of the devil." Jazmin, 20 years.

"I love people that don't walk the streets since they help us keep our hope alive." Luis Alverto, 23 years.

This is what they tell us and this is what we need to know. Yes, they are fragile and every morning they wake up to a world of problems. But their hopes and expectations still shine through.

We know the causes behind the tragedy they live and while we look for financing for more projects like SuperArte, which you can read about in this week's issue, we cross our fingers and hope that tragedy is not the solution to their problems.

Articulo publicado el 6 de marzo 2006
por
Emma Barlow
Honduras This Week,periodico en ingles,


In the Medicos Sin Frontera's building in downtown Comayaguela a small project has been working to significantly improve the lives of the city's street children, helping them fight their all too ominous futures.

The project coordinators, Agathe de Chassey and Antonio Perla brought together their two unique skills and with the help of the MSF have created a most successful project.

The children, already familiar with the site of MSF were invited to join the latest of the SuperArte Projects. Perla's talent lies in art - at his home in Guatemala he works as a sculptor. De Chassey's expertise is in agrotherapy - a concept of therapy through production, "reinforcing a sense of patience and providing time for reflection," de Chassey clarified.

De Chassey also explained that the center provided the children with a "therapeutic, relaxing space where they could escape the menacing environment of the street for a few hours every day." For many it is an opportunity to concentrate on something other than the drugs and violence that plague them in their everyday lives.

The daily workshops which ran for six weeks finished this week. They attracted many children, girls and boys, young men and women. Some children were frustrated by the conditions of the project - politeness and respectfulness was insisted on, bad language was prohibited, the children had to dress properly and drugs and weapons are permanently banned from the site. However, a group of dedicated children soon emerged who followed the project from start to finish. Many of these children were pregnant girls who thrived under such regulations and enjoyed the separation of girls and boys at the beginning of the project, feeling safe for the first time in a long while.

The children who committed themselves to the project were well rewarded when it was revealed their works would be sold and the "artists" would receive something in return. The craftware consisting mainly of mirror and glassware has sold well and an exposition of the works was particularly successful. "Not just in terms of money - the project overall has provided the children with a real sense of achievement and many of them stayed off drugs for the length of the project." Perla said.

The income made from the sales exceeded all expectations and posed the project coordinators with a dilemma. The need to give something back to the children was obvious but the pair feared that a cash payment would be used to feed habits such as drug abuse and alcoholism. The end result was a points system - if a child earns 100 points they can go to a supermarket and while supervised buy whatever they need.

The pair of volunteers hope that some of their work will be continued after they leave. "We have set up everything to keep it going - we have a customer base and contacts willing to donate the materials, it would be simple to carry on," Perla said.

There are not many projects that provide such quick results - in six short weeks a child's outlook on life can significantly change, having created something that another person admired and purchased heightens their sense of feeling accepted and valued.

Their social skills have been developed through working closely with others and SuperArte has provided them with a skill that could help support them and their families through the sale of homemade art.

More importantly SuperArte provides its participants with an opportunity to act like children should - to have fun, in a safe environment. "Some of these children are simply not used to good things happening to them," summed up de Chassey.

La Asociacion Superarte, en su taller en Comayaguela, capacita a un grupo de jovenes en situacion irregular que desean superarse de manera digna creando objetos de reciclaje, de decoracion y utiles.

El taller estuvo en el pais patrocinado por Medicos sin Fronteras Suiza.

Fue un excito tanto para los jovenes como para el publico !
Superarte presento sus objetos durante una Exposicion-Venta en la Alianza francesa en febrero, de tal manera lo hizo en el Liceo Frances.

Superarte fue un excito! Un excito tan de la parte de los jovenes que del publico !

Actualmente, el equipo de Superarte esta buscando financiamento para seguir capacitando a estos "nuevos artesanos" para pulir su formacion durante dos meses mas.

Para contactarnos y recibir informacion sobre nuestro proyecto y taller que tiene tres enfoques, los cuales son: el enfoque terapeutico, pedagogico y de produccion, gracias por escribirnos al correo siguiente:
superarte2006@yahoo.com

Sus comentarios en esta pagina son bienvenidos.

Gracias por su colaboracion y hasta luego!

El equipo Superarte,

Antonio Perla (Creador del concepto Superarte y director del departemento artistico del taller)y Agathe de Chassey ( directora general de Superarte y logistica)