In July of 2021 Bonface Beti and Dr. Angi Yoder-Maina explored ways to engage with the world’s problems through healing-centered peacebuilding.
The Green String Network (GSN), where both take employment, investigates how chronic violence has impacted communities and integrates a holistic approach to breaking cycles of violence within said communities. There is a need for mental health support not just in East Africa but the whole world. Every hour, there are individuals who cannot afford therapy, have limited access or reject the practices as a viable resource. Thus GSN has started to develop an arts and cultural piece to engage in community mental health prevention. The key to the approach is that the interventions are not just about raising awareness, but seeking to create behavioral change, so that people who are hurting stop hurting others.
So at GSN, they use storytelling art embodied practices to help people articulate their life experiences and recognize how they shape their behavior. Here, these methods help unlock new ways of thinking, behaving, and feeling, to live more full and peaceful lives as individuals and communities.
Learn more about the Green String Network and how collaborations between storytelling and art are rebuilding gaps in mental health:
Presenter Websites:
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.