special programs

In addition to mental health care and social services, ASTT offers several special activities for clients. These include a regular English conversation group and various social gatherings that bring together clients in an atmosphere of relaxation and sharing.

HEALING IMAGES

One of the most innovative activities offered by ASTT is an interactive photography workshop entitled “Healing Images.” Initiated in 2003 through a grant from the Open Society Institute’s Community Fellows program, the project enables clients to explore the nurturing power of self-expression. Participants are provided with digital cameras and basic instruction in a supportive, therapeutic setting and encouraged to use the medium of photography to explore their physical environments and inner thoughts.

Photojournalist Steven Rubin, founding instructor of “Healing Images,” notes that the workshop enables clients — who so often lack control over their asylum status, employment situation, and other critical aspects of their lives — to select, frame and represent various aspects of their world. This empowering process engages participants in a dynamic of creative decision-making and sharing, both in the taking of the images and in the wording of the accompanying captions.

Each client’s images are integrated into their ongoing therapy work at ASTT. In some cases, with explicit permission, these images have been exhibited as a means of heightening public awareness of the situation of torture survivors.

You never know what you can do unless you try. I stood in the cold for the first time without a coat to shelter me, to provide warmth. I just wanted to try it, to see how it felt. In my country I wanted to try politics, as one of the few women who do. I then too stood alone in the cold, unprotected and unsheltered.

Since humans are not snails that move with their homes (shells) on their back, I was not going to be that exceptional human to do it. Even if I could, consider the distance—that would have still been a hurdle. Words will never be sufficient enough to thank who offered that little space. That’s my world. I lived in a small space but with a free mind and with other conditions like the photography class my mind grew lighter. I liken myself to a corn grain: if it drops someplace no matter how shallow it was buried, if conditions are favorable it will grow.

Look at these girls! Their lives are beautiful and without worry. They reflect the joy of life. Will my life one day resemble that of these little ones?

This reminds me of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Dakar, which is the administrative building. People think we have no roads, no cars, no houses, no buildings and this shows we have buildings like this in Dakar. Everywhere in the world there are poor and rich. People here in America only show the bad parts of Africa.

This photograph reminds me of my transition from my life in Africa to my new life here in America. In Africa I was a light to my family, my friends, my children. I provided for my family, we were a happy family. Then I got involved in politics and this light went out. Then I came to America…a second light went on for me, ASTT. ASTT is the light for me, a guide for me now.