The power of ART

It’s always fun to share stories, I love sharing mine, my past experiences made me become a better person, its not as beautiful as your story but my story helps and encourages women to move forward, tonevergive up in life.

For me, my past is my water and sunlight ,it gave me strong roots and branches , huge trunk and thick bright green leaves.

As an artist, and former migrant worker, it’s a great privilege to be invited internationally to facilitate ETA or Empowerment Through Art in Lebanon.

I was invited by Caritas Lebanon to speak forwomen, some are still girls, who werehuman trafficked victims from eightdifferent countries, I conducted art therapy workshops to four shelters with almost one hundred women participants all in all. My purpose is to encourage women, to pursue their dreams and passion, to never give up, to stop being avictim, instead be a survivorand be an inspiration to others.

So for ten days of staying in Beirut, what happened was, I along with all the women , shared stories, laugh and cried, wrote poems ( I am Poem ) and created artworksof our dreams and visions.

I feel like I am dreaming as one of the reason why I am pursuing fine arts is because I want to be an expert in painting so I can share it to people who can’t afford to go to school, teach women and children how to draw and paint what is on their mind, using their natural creativity and imaginations to empower themselves, other people and the society.

Last year, I met Noha Roukoss here in Philippines, who is the awareness project officer of Caritas Lebanon for migrant workers. How and why did I met her is another story.

She is the person and agood friend, I may say a family from half of the world, who made this empowerment through art workshop and therapy possible. I believe that we meet people because there’s always a reason and great storiescan be written, and here's one of mine with my friend Noha.