Center combines art and culture for refugees

Featured on philly.com

Blending 19th-century settlement house values with the healing power of art, a South Philadelphia storefront is the busy hub where trauma meets recovery for two of the city's fastest-growing immigrant groups: Burmese and Bhutanese refugees.

For Poonam Ghimire, 17, who was born in a refugee camp after her family fled a government crackdown on the Nepalese in Bhutan, the storefront called "Southeast by Southeast" (SExSE) is a place to demonstrate her culture's native dance moves alongside an African American break-dance crew.

Ghimire, her parents, and her brother were resettled in Philadelphia three years ago. Now she's a Furness High School junior and speaks English comfortably.

For her mother, Devi Ghimire, 40, SExSE is a place to practice traditional back-strap weaving, learn to knit American-style, try a sewing machine, and struggle in English class.

For the program's lead artist, Shira Walinsky, 41, who has a master of fine arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania, SExSE is where she meets families at risk of isolation, depression, or worse and offers artmaking activities that showcase their resiliency and almost incidentally get them talking about their lives.

Ventilating their experiences can be profoundly important, experts say.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined 16 suicides of Bhutanese refugees resettled in America from 2009 to 2012 and identified "low perceived social support" as a critical risk factor. None of the deaths was in Philadelphia.

Southeast by Southeast, an homage to its 1927 South Seventh Street location and the Southeast Asian immigrants it serves, is a collaboration of the city's Mural Arts Program, the city Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services, the Philadelphia Refugee Mental Health Collaborative, and Lutheran Children and Family Service.

Mural Arts' executive director, Jane Golden, said the project began in 2012 after the Health Department awarded her group a grant to work with the city's growing populations of Burmese and Bhutanese.

The program makes murals, of course. An archetypal Asian tiger with patterns derived from traditional textiles is on an adjacent building's wall. Other murals are planned.

But operating on an annual budget of about $100,000, it also incorporates weaving, dancing, photography, and cooking, with volunteers providing translation as needed.

For one of the activities, participants used donated cameras to document their lives and shared the photos. Some also showed snapshots from their days in the camps. The exercise brought anger, anxiety, and sorrow to the surface as well as strategies to cope with loss.

Click here to read the full article.