As we as a society continue to progress, the importance of our youths and their position to create a future of peace and understanding becomes more and more apparent. We all have trauma, even our children and the youths. To unlock our true potential and become our best selves, we need to be able to move past this trauma and heal. This is a lot easier said than done. Even for the more privileged among us.
Shanthi Maargam is an NGO (non-governmental organisation) that understands this need for emotional healing. Established in 2016, Shanthi Maargam works with children and youths from disadvantaged areas in Colombo to provide a safe space where these young people can be supported and encouraged to heal and grow.
The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with gender consultant and Shanthi Maargam Founder and Executive Director Kamani Jinadasa, for a closer look at Shanthi Maargam and what they do.
What is the Shanthi Maargam story? How did it come to be?
Globally, research shows that there is a close association between boys’ childhood exposure to violence and the perpetration of intimate partner violence by men in adulthood. I was project director and a research team member of a study conducted by CARE International in 2013 which highlighted this link, and this understanding led me to start the organisation “Shanthi Maargam”.
Shanthi Maargam works with adolescents in predominantly low-income poverty settings in Colombo with the aim of preventing violence in these communities. Our core mission is to create safe spaces and opportunities to enhance the emotional wellbeing of adolescents. Through the provision of psychosocial services to strengthen emotion management, Shanthi Maargam mainly works to address emotional harm on children as a result of early exposure to violence, and to influence positive gender norms, attitudes, and behaviours from a young age to prevent the perpetration of violence at later stages in life.
What are the services Shanthi Maargam offers?
We want to help children and youths heal from the trauma they may have experienced or witnessed and learn how to manage their emotions and find a deeper level of peace, which we believe can break the cycle of violence in families and communities.
At Shanthi Maargam, we use a two-pronged approach to try to break the cycle of violence in families and communities.
The first approach is by creating a space to have open conversations around gender, relationships, sexual health, substance abuse, bullying, violence and abuse, and other stresses among children and youths.
The second is by healing the emotional traumas of vulnerable children and youths by offering free counselling, lessons, and emotional management tools to them through our “Art of Living” youth centre in Colombo.
We do this through individual counselling, either through therapy sessions or through our 14-hour hotline. Our youth centre is an inclusive space that welcomes children and youths from all socioeconomic, ethnic, religious backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations.
Since we started in 2016, Shanthi Maargam has helped hundreds of children and youths overcome feelings of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide ideation, and other life stressors and pressures they experience during adolescence.
Tell us about how Shanthi Maargam works directly with communities.
When working with children and youths in our surrounding communities, we focus on creating a safe and confidential space for them to come to for support, to listen, solve issues, and encourage them to move forward in their lives. The children we work with are from predominantly poor communities, where they are regularly exposed to violence, either through their own experiences, or from watching it. They see their parents in a constant cycle of poverty, hardship, and often violence. They often face neglect in school or drop out of school early.
As a result, these children and youths often do not have people around them who see them for their potential and believe in who they are. Also, if they display difficult behaviours and attitudes, they can be shunned by their families instead of being supported to help them overcome their issues.
Shanthi Maargam is a place where these children can come in and receive respect, care, and encouragement to help them heal from the challenges they face. In addition to having discussions about emotional wellbeing, bullying, child abuse, parental pressure, substance abuse, gender, relationships, etc., we also try to provide them with tools for emotion management such as yoga, meditation, karate, music lessons, or lessons in topics they are challenged with at school such as maths and languages with the support of our volunteers.
We also have two structured programmes adapted to the Sri Lankan context which were funded by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) Sri Lanka to reduce gender-based violence and violence against children which we use when working with these children.
One programme is the “Parivarthan” programme, which works with male athletes to change harmful attitudes towards women and girls using cricket as an entry point. The second programme “PATHS to Adulthood” uses a positive youth development framework to promote bonding and resilience, enhance social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural skills, develop self-esteem, and foster good social behaviours and norms.
The pilot projects in Sri Lanka showed notable changes in youths’ attitudes and behaviours resulting in more empathetic and less violent approaches in handling challenging situations as well as reductions in negative attitudes towards women and girls
What is the biggest issue facing young people today? And how can we as a society help?
As a country, we don’t talk enough about the fact that we have just dealt with a three-decade long civil war. We’ve seen so much racism and violence, as a country we’re literally hurting, and we just don’t talk about it. We shouldn’t be surprised with the levels of violence we see today. If we want a peaceful, joyful country, then we need people, especially youths and children, to heal from their experiences. We need to focus on creating a healthy generation of kids who become adults.
Emotional health and safe spaces are very important, and this is what Shanthi Maargam drives. On a personal level, my childhood was tough. My mother suffered from bipolar depression and post-natal depression and I lost my father as a child. But I had friends who supported me. Even then, I wish there had been a place like Shanthi Maargam to help me heal better. Emotional wounds are wounds we carry with us throughout our lives. Why not heal children now so that they can deal with them and have the best chance of growing up strong?
As a society, we need to address children’s mental health and understand that children can have issues and undergo stress. We tend not to recognise this as adults and parents because we often don’t recognise our own issues. There are no courses for being a parent. You’re landed with this precious child and you raise them the best way you can. But when you have your own unresolved trauma, this can be projected, and sometimes, as an adult who is suffering yourself, you can’t see your child suffering.
Understanding that mental health is an issue for us and our children is key to nurturing a well-adjusted younger generation. We need to be non-judgemental and let go of our deeply ingrained views. We also need to break the cycle of violence, and an easy way to prevent this is through working with boys who can grow up to be men who actively break the cycle, and with girls who can grow up to resist abuse and stand up against it.