Loss of our dear friend Sathya

Sathya

Sathya receiving a certificate from Eric Miller for attending the relationship skills workshop held in our office in Jan 2008. Sathya has attended another of our workshop on Group therapy.

Sathya also attended our group therapy sessions. The last session she was present was on the pros and cons of going for surgery. Sathya was very keen on emasculation. 

In fact, it was heart warming for me to see group members tell her that she must have one on one sessions with me before she goes for the surgery. But, Sathya had other plans, she did not want to wait, she had waited long enough. She was looking forward to becoming "a woman". 

We heard Sathya died friday 14th November in the hospital where she got herself admitted to undergo the surgery. We had convened a group session on Dec 1st to discuss what Sathya's death meant to each of us. 

We had mixed feelings... sometimes we felt angry, sometimes we felt guilty, sometimes we felt sad, we still feel a lot of pain and no denying the fact that we all miss her. She was very kind and gentle to all who knew him. She was also a pillar of support to her family especially her sisters.

We  don't have to wait for another death, we at Center for Counselling are resolved in getting together and supporting those who want the surgery, and  give counselling support for all those plan to undergo this surgery.

Approaches to counselling Children

This 4 hour workshop was for 14 people working with Orphan and vulnerable children. The participants were from various NGOs and the training was organised by Community Health Education Society.  

This training was again very new to almost all participants. We got a very good feedback from the participants.

We introduced Storytelling and Art as approaches to working with children. We used a series of activities to explain why these approaches will work.

"It was nice to having you both(Magdalene and Thamilarasi) with us in our learning process. Today's session was a excellent experience for all the participants and very special for me in learning about the child's feeling. I was much impressed." - Valavan V.S, Program Manager (Technical), CHES, Chennai

Pediatric Counselling

This session was for around 15 counsellors working in the Pondicherry State AIDS control Society's Integrated counselling and testing centers (ICTCs), which comes under the National AIDS Control Organisation. 

This was a refresher training session planned for counsellors in the ICTCs. The session carried very practical methods of working with children. We introduced storytelling exercises which helped the counsellors understand what really was meant by child centered counselling.

Most of the counsellors felt, this was the first time someone was explaining how to work with children. The counsellors were very appreciative about the session which they conveyed to us directly and also had given a feedback to the training institute which is South India AIDS Action Programme.