Sports linked to creativity to help vulnerable children express themselves

In Moldova, Terre des hommes is running two projects to help vulnerable children express themselves and to acquire greater self-confidence through various psychosocial activities. The two projects bring different kinds of aid to the children: the MOVE project, sponsored by UEFA, works more through games and sport, whereas the CSPN project (Child protection safety net) uses creative activities.

One of the first stages in linking the two projects was to train all the teams at the same time, so that the MOVE team knew how to use the creative activities, and the CPSN team, the sporting activities. Michèle Meuwly (resource person for the MOVE project) went there to create a common programme, whilst keeping the aim of psychosocial support, consistent with the standards of the Moldovan Ministry of Education, and always based on the principles of Terre des hommes.

For Michele it has been a very interesting and successful experience: "For the first time I trained not only a MOVE group, but also CPSN social field coordinators. What I tried to add in their toolbox is how to practice creative activities in which children not only have a frame to work in, but are also free to express themselves as unique personalities; we don’t want them to achieve a “nice” result, we want them to be in a process of expressing themselves with no constraints".

"The approach is non-judgemental and open; we do not expect anything, children can use the available material they want and most important of all, they then have a feedback moment in which they can share or explain what they did and why".

"In Moldova, the MOVE project is now in a process of integration into the CPSN Project. Reflecting on this, Ms Meuwly commented that this "was an aim from the very beginning: the idea was always to give the MOVE 'Movement, Games and Sports' methodology as a tool to be used in Terre des hommes local project".

She concludes by saying that "because here in Moldova many CPSN facilitators work with artistic activities, now we would like all MOVE and CPSN facilitators to have both capacities of working with games, sport and creative activities with a psychosocial methodology. The aim is to give children the opportunity to play and use creative activities, in order to help them to grow in their personal and social skills".

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