"I was trying to create a place for the kids to have fun. They were fending for themselves, growing up way too fast," Sanders said. "I wanted them to be kids.
"The ones who had been traumatized, I wanted them to be able to express themselves through art."
Art therapy has become an increasingly popular tool for helping traumatized children.
Marcia Rosal, a professor in FSU's department of art education and director of the art therapy program, says art therapy has become much more accepted as a way of reaching out to children since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Six months after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas, the poor island nation is seldom a front-page story anymore. But make no mistake, Haiti is still struggling to rebuild its basic infrastructure.
Sanders, 25, a Chiles High graduate with an undergraduate degree in psychology from FSU, went to Haiti with a group of 13 from HOPE worldwide. Sanders' non-denominational Capital City Church does work with the international charity.
They flew from Miami to Port-au -Prince, a city still missing roofs on most buildings and surrounded by tent communities, on their way to the orphanage in Ganthier. Sanders was the only art therapist in the group of volunteers. She brought a suitcase teeming with art materials. What they didn't use during her eight-day stay, she left behind.
"I had to be really flexible. I had to be ready for whatever, to go with what the children needed," she said. "These kids have been through terrible, terrible things. One girl, her parents had tried to kill her."I let them show me what they needed to show me. They knew best. They just needed someone to spend time with them, to show them I cared about them. The art served to do that."Art therapy has been an increasingly more popular field of study at FSU. The university had a four-year program in Pass Christian, Miss., working with children whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. The university also has a relationship with a nonprofit in Bangkok, Thailand, where FSU students use art therapy with victims of a child sex-slave trade.
"Art therapy is a good, accessible treatment for children in particular," Rosal said. "It helps them find ways to understand and express the situations they were in, and hopefully find ways to cope with them."
Sanders, who hopes to graduate in December with a double master's in art therapy and counseling, was the first FSU art therapy student to visit Haiti in the aftermath of the January earthquake.
"We talked about the fact that the children would be traumatized and to be aware of that," Rosal said. "I told Amanda, who is just a remarkable person, to not open anything she didn't think she could change. Children with trauma need long-term support and care."
Sanders, who has done internships at Capital City Youth Services and at the forensic unit at the state hospital in Chattahoochee, is hoping she can go back to Haiti. She even learned some Creole to help her during future trips.
"The director said she saw the children change during the time we were there, that their attitudes changed," Sanders said. "They were more bright and more respectful of each other.
"I learned that you didn't need language necessarily to communicate. I saw it in action with the kids."
BY DOUG BLACKBURN • DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER • JUNE 25, 2010
An art therapy graduate student at Florida State University, Sanders was there to work on her final project for school – and, to hopefully help some of the 90 children cope with the destruction they have been living amidst during the past six months.
“I was trying to create a place for the kids to have fun. They were fending for themselves, growing up way too fast,” Sanders said. “I wanted them to be kids.
“The ones who had been traumatized, I wanted them to be able to express themselves through art.”
Art therapy has become an increasingly popular tool for helping traumatized children.
Read more on this in Friday's Tallahassee Democrat.
