Master’s students of the Department of Psychology at the reporting training seminar on art therapy work with children «Art helps» in Kyiv

On June 15 and 16, a reporting training seminar was held for the leaders of art therapy classes under the project «Art helps» from the «Friends of Children» BF (pryyateliditey) sponsored by the Charity Organization UCARE, Inc. (groups/UCAREInc). The seminar was attended by 6 psychologists and fellows who worked for four months with children in crisis categories, mainly from internally displaced families of Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Bilotserkiv and Berezhny territorial communities. A total of 54 unique art therapy classes were held within the project for more than 60 children in crisis categories.

The psychologists of the project «Art helps» in Zaporizhzhia were Kateryna Filonenko and Sofya Cherednychenko, master’s students of the 1st year of the specialty «Psychology» of the Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University (group SN-113m), who, within the framework of the project, conducted several classes at the dormitory No. 3 of the Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University and ten classes at the base of the Communal Institution «Zaporizhzhia specialized boarding school II-III degrees »Sichovyikolegium” (sichovyikolegium). The participants of these classes were children aged 5 to 12 with IDP status (Orikhiv, Pology, Gulyaipole and Tokmak).

Assistant professor of the Department of Psychology, Tetyana Borodulkina, acted as the presenter-trainer of the seminar.

During the seminar, project psychologists presented the results of their teams’ work; shared their own experience of conducting classes, conducted art therapy exercises with seminar participants. The seminar also included psychodiagnostic and metaphorical workshops, where the participants practiced working with specific projective psychodiagnostic techniques (express diagnosis in group work and in an individual format). The participants gained experience working with a variety of metaphorical associative cards, made Easter eggs at the Easter egg-making master class conducted by project coordinator Dmytro Samarskyi.

The Zaporizhzhia team, together with the Department of Psychology, expresses its sincere gratitude to Maryna Krysa, president of the Friends of the Children Foundation, and Dmytro Samarskyi, the coordinator of the art therapy project «Art Helps» from the Friends of the Children Foundation, to the sponsors from the UCARE, Inc. charity. for the opportunity to join such an important cause and participate in the general seminar. We wish our partners successful implementation of all projects! We will be glad for further cooperation!