Partner organisation: Médecins Sans Frontières
2021 – 2022
Sick children shall recover through playing and painting
Last year, the Marburg-based foundation Hoffnung13 provided 100,000 euros for a play therapy project at Hangha Hospital, Kenema (Sierra Leone). This is being done in a first collaboration with the organisation Doctors Without Borders, whose work actually focuses on medical care. Many malnourished and seriously ill children are treated as inpatients there. The region was severely affected by the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Play therapy at Hangha Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone (Photo: MSF)
The Hoffnung13 Foundation asked Médecins Sans Frontières whether there was a need for play therapy as a follow-up to medical treatment in the numerous medical projects of this organisation. This was the impetus for a pilot project which, after several years of preparation by Médecins Sans Frontières, has now been launched in a hospital in Sierra Leone, West Africa, under the supervision of a play therapist. Since then, the spatial conditions have been created by providing a roofed structure in the hospital grounds, called “Tukul”, and setting up a therapy room.
Play therapy at Hangha Hospital in Kenema (Photo: MSF)
Since the play therapy will be carried out by the Sierra Leonean staff in perspective, their training is also on the programme. The play therapy project was conceived as an important activity within a comprehensive concept for the prevention and treatment of mental illnesses that can impair the recovery process in children and lead to developmental disorders. This is to be counteracted by professionally guided play therapy. With this in mind, a comprehensive mental health strategy integrating play therapy activities was adopted for Hangha Hospital last April. Thus, therapists have already been recruited who will be on duty seven days a week in shifts like other medical staff.
“This play therapy project will really only take place thanks to the funding from the Hope13 Foundation,” says Clara Aparicio, Foundation Partnerships Contact at MSF. “For us, this is a pilot project that would not have been approved internally without your foundation’s involvement due to our strong prioritisation of purely medical interventions.”
(Médecins Sans Frontières, Berlin)