I make money giving mental health wellness care to kids

Christine Ombina: I make money giving mental health wellness care to kids (Photo: Silas Nyamweya) Art therapy, a fast-growing discipline, is known to provide hope and comfort to people with different mental health challenges. Art therapy enriches the lives of individuals, families, and communities through active art-making, creative processes and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Christine Ombina, a mental health champion, has been practising the trade for some time now and affirms art therapy provides an advantage to individuals who lack the language to talk about what is affecting them. For her art therapy sessions, Ms Ombina, who is a community health professional, mainly targets children from underserved communities in Kenya, those between the ages of eight and 14. Ombina, who is based in Mukuru Kwa Njenga in Embakasi, Nairobi County, was inspired to venture into art therapy by her experience as a mental health survivor. "I aim to help young people go through the mental issues they may be facing successfully," said Ombina. She added: "I have lived with bipolar disorder. Having done mental health advocacy since 2016, I have gathered a lot of information on mental wellness. I wanted to cascade the information to the young ones during the Teach for Kenya fellowship. This is how I thought would be a creative way of actualising this plan .. use art to pass on this information." A typical art therapy session lasts for one hour. Ms Ombina is also inspired to cultivate and nurture talent during these sessions. She also notes that through enhancing these children's mental wellness using art therapy, their physical well-being has also improved so have their academics. "What inspires me is how talented the learners in my classroom are. Through the project, they have learnt a lot and have encouraged even more learners in the upper classes to join the sessions. Just seeing how their academics have improved since the inception of the project in April 2023 is quite encouraging. More parents have become interested in the project and are supporting their children to embrace mental wellness," she said. To ensure the business is sustainable and runs smoothly, Ombima charges for the sessions. However, the cost depends on the number of children, the number of sessions needed, logistics such as transport and facilitator charges and lastly, whether she is using her materials or their own. She plans to reach more children from local schools in Nairobi and even other counties. "We are targeting 100 learners from Gramojoy Pre-primary School. From here, we shall scale up to the 50 partner schools working with Teach for Kenya, across Nairobi, Machakos and Kisumu. We start with Nairobi and then extend to Kisumu and Machakos. However, any other school that seeks to enrol their learners into the programme are highly welcome. We also intend to set up an income-generating activity to ensure the project is sustainable" Ombina tells City Biz. Nonetheless, Ms Ombima and her team still need support from well-wishers and stakeholders to expand the programme and ensure more learners benefit from it. The support required is in the form of finances, and other resources that make the work easier. The project also needs drawing materials including drawing books, pencils, rubbers, sharpeners, mark pens, manilla papers, luminous papers, drawing canvas and acrylic paints. She is also requesting organizations to support her work by featuring the artwork on their websites so that they can get a ready market for these products. Like any other business, Ms Ombima's venture is also faced with several challenges most of which are financially related. "Scaling up needs a lot of resources from setting up the team to making it feasible. The motivation of the volunteers is needed as it will ensure the team carries out their duties effectively," Ms Ombima tells City Biz. Despite these challenges, Ombima is relentless in her pursuit to empower children through her mental wellness programme. "Through engaging activities and supportive environments, Artvista strives to empower children with the tools they need to navigate life's challenges with resilience and joy. We are calling on everyone to join us in the quest of championing mental wellness to children," she says.

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