Visit to Dhaka and Chittagong, Bangladesh - 10 to 23 Jan 2009

     

Attending the Psychodrama, sociodrama workshops led by Herb Propper, Ph D., TEP., Director Celebrations of the Soul. USA.

Our founder Magdalene Jeyarathnam is attending a series of workshops held at various places including the Dhaka University and the Chittagong University. These workshops are organised by the Bangladesh Therapeutic Theatre Institute(BTTI). 

The titles of the workshops are 

1. Psychodrama and sociometry: Healing for trauma and substance abuse
   
2. Sociodrama, social networks and living newspaper
3. Introduction to psychodrama and sociometry: healing emotional difficulties
4. Introduction to sociodrama and sociometry:psychosocial care and empowering disadvantaged people

Discussion about the Peer Counselling Training and Group sessions - Jan 5 2009

We (Shakti Center and Center for Counselling) had another meeting Jan 5, 2009 on collecting information, making a simple videos using handy-cam to record different reasons what one needs to know about the Sexual Reassignment Surgery. We seem to be having impressive turn outs for our meetings. 

Notes of the meeting from Anirudd - Shakti Center

Minutes of the Peer-Counselling Steering Committee meeting held on 5 January 2008 

People Present:

Magdalene Jeyaratnam - Center for Counselling

Sankari - Center for Counselling

Padma - The Shakti Center

Srivath - Group Session Participant

Teja - Group Session Participant

Praveen - SIAAP (AIF fellow)

Priyababu - SIDA Foundation

Dhanam - SIPTF

Shiva - Sangama

Mohan K - Rainbow Charitable Trust

Venkat Kumar - Rainbow Charitable Trust

Aniruddhan Vasudevan - The Shakti Center

It was a short session to follow up on the little amount of work done after the previous meeting (of 16 December 2008) vis-à-vis the subject of Sex Reassignment Surgery.

Some resources were procured: the Harry Benjamin Guidelines, information on Transgender health from Fenway, Boston, Dr. Marci Bowers' webpage on "genital reassignment surgery" etc. The links were sent to the members on the list by email. (Please let me know if you have not received the same).

Dr. Jyotsna Murthy in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Ramachandra Medical College, Hospital, seems to be a person we must meet. She has performed/ overseen the hospital's first full SRS procedure (as opposed to emasculation alone) for Lakshya.

NIMHANS, Bangalore, does not seem have a formal protocol or counseling-related criteria for people going for SRS, besides the diagnosis of "gender dysphoria." We should talk further about this with Dr. Shekar Seshadri in the Department of Psychiatry at NIMHANS.

Dr. Venkatesh Chakrapani is back in the country. He has done a lot of work with transgender women and MSM. His knowledge and expertise might be crucial in our moving forward faster.

So those are three people whom we need to talk to soon!

Immediate work:

To start with, it was decided that we must extract sections from the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care and translate them into Tamil so that everyone here has some idea about what they are. So, people volunteered to read and extract sections and meet to consolidate that work.

This reading-and-culling group will meet on Saturday, 10 January 2009, at 10 am at the Center for Counselling. The volunteers for this are: Magdalene, Sankari, Shiva, Dhanam, Kalki, Srivath, Teja and Aniruddh. But other enthusiastic souls are welcome to join us!

Following that a timetable was drawn for the subsequent meetings of the committee as well as the group therapy sessions. Padma sent this as a separate mail marked "Save this Email." So please save it! I copy it here again: 

Saturday, January 10th, 10:00 AM: Reading-and-culling session on SRS documents

Monday, February 2nd, 3:00-4:00 PM: Peer counseling steering committee session

Monday, February 23, 3:00-5:00 PM: Peer counseling steering committee meeting: project assessment 

We are planning to run group sessions on the following dates:

English group - Timing 6PM to 7.30 PM - Fridays

Jan 31

Feb 7, 14, 21, 28 

Mar 7, 14, 21

Tamil group - Timing 4 PM to 5.30 PM - Wednesdays

Jan 28

Feb 4, 11, 18, 25

Mar 4, 11, 18

Human Rights Commission in South Asia for the rights of Sexual minorities

Mrs Jayarathnam posing for a photo with Rose, our first Television Transgender anchor, Rose. She hosts a television show called "Ippadiku Rose" translated as "yours truly Rose"

Check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjIZqJFga6k

      

                  

Center for Counselling hosted a planning meeting on South Asia Human Rights Commission for the sexual minority groups in these countries.

Brief Notes by Praveen Basaviah about this meeting until we get the official report from Manohar in Bangalore.

LGBTQ is for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer.

Planning Meeting:

Should a South Asian LGBTQ Human Rights Commission(HRC) be created?  If so, why and how?

January 5, 2008

Location: Center for Counselling

1)   Do we need it?

2)   Who should represent on it?

3)   What should be structure, activities?

4)   Follow up discussion?

 

Original meeting where this idea came up was in Nepal.

There are meetings being held in Delhi, Bangalore this week, too.

One arivani (transgender -TG) says that HRC is needed because straight folks filing complaints to police are listened to and treated fine, but LGBTQ folks aren’t listened to and are mistreated by police.  With the increase in advocacy work out there and sensitization work among police re: TGs, TGs have a bit more confidence/ability to stand up for their rights when police are mistreating them/ignoring them.

Padma: A central body is needed because LGBTQ rights work is, in her observations, taken up adhoc by different orgs or individuals, so it’s sporadic and unorganized.  A central body like an HRC, in a major way, can DOCUMENT human rights violations and serve as a source for such information for others (receptacle of documentation; library of sorts…)

There is a specific way in which a human rights violation report needs to be written.   The movement (and hrc) builds up credibility over time with documented proof.

HRC will balance out the large degree to which lgbtq is primarily associated with hiv/aids. 

The HRC can mobilize resources to work towards RIGHTS.

NGOs are tired and bogged down and need a push/inspiration for specifically RIGHTS work.

A long term goal for the hrc should be thinking about how to fund things like publicity/lawyers/etc and provide resources to the defense of LGBTQ people when something happens to them that violates their rights.

Hrc could also serve as a body that helps properly funnel funds to different orgs/people/cases from different sources that have money but don’t know where or how to give it.

The hrc is regionally/nationally focused; it’s not really for the local/city, state issues.

Proposal to not use “LGBTQ…” in the name of the hrc.  Use something more general

This hrc is specifically for sexual minorities (people), not the general issues of gender and sexuality.

There is a need for hrc because other orgs, like iglhrc, don’t do much documentation. Plus, issues and incidents that are local to India aren’t well understood and given justice when written about or discussed.  A regional/subcontinental body would better understand.

Next steps:

Can Manohar send us minutes from initial Nepal meeting?

The four India committee members haven’t yet decided what the process will be to choose which two people will represent India at the next multi-national planning meeting in Nepal.

Minutes from today’s mtg will be sent out.

Question regarding hrc structure/activities will happen at next meeting and will be an ongoing process.

                                         

Thank you Praveen for the notes.

Christmas Party at our office

 

          

 

Thank you all for attending our Christmas dinner. This was time to chill, relax and say "thank you" to all who have associated with us.

We have done several activities in the past year and that would not have been possible without you wonderful people. 

Department of Social Defence

     

The session was on Positive Disciplining

There were around 32 participants from 18 children's home all over Tamil Nadu. They were teachers, superintendents, house masters, head masters etc. 

The question which they always had was on if children are not to be given any sort of punishment like beating or verbal abuse what else should be done to discipline.

Parenting workshop and Teachers workshop in Olcott Memorial School Dec 20 2008

Parenting workshop:

Parents of 7 th standard students attended this workshop. We had parents complaining about

1. Children becoming more angry, moody and rebellious
2. Not concentrating on their studies

We brought up the issue of disciplining children without beating them. This raised a lot of discussion. This session surely raised consciousness about positive ways of disciplining children.

Followed by this workshop we did a second part of the 

Teachers Workshop

Here the teachers discussed some of the points they had discussed in the last session. The last session the teachers discussed their personal experiences of childhood where adults had physically, emotionally or verbally abused them. They had made a list of insights based on their sharing. 

They shared those insights with others and we led a discussion of why children should not be abused in the classroom. It was very interesting to note that almost all the teachers said they beat their own children.  During the course of the discussion these were some issues that came up:

1. Maybe we beat children because we are unable to cope with our own emotions of frustration or tiredness
2. We maybe making children into very aggressive or angry adults

The third meeting we planned to show some techniques of positive disciplining of children.
  

Second Grief Counselling Workshop Dec 17 to 19, 2008

Center for counselling ran another workshop on loss and grief. The feedback of this workshop is given below:

“The workshop sessions were effective and good and in a way helped to rethink the learnt subjects. Also new informations were shared by  the trainer in the areas of understanding the actual situation of the person in / living with grief due to a loss and how to deal / help himself by getting into the “Shoes of that person” and making him to cope up with the situation.  The few points I learnt from the workshop was about the grief strategies that different people adopt based on his personality in different situations of loss and grief. I also learnt about Elizabeth Kubler Ross Stages of grief and the rating scales and how to use it carefully and correctly. Understanding people and using words carefully especially towards the minority groups. I also learnt about the difference between grief and trauma and also better understanding about grief, stress and depression. I liked the methodology small group was very effective to get the concentration of the participants and also the attentiveness. The hospitality was good and very homely atmosphere. Some comments and suggestions are some more materials can be given, role play can be made, time management can be enhanced. On the whole the training was very flexible and good”- S.Godwin Ebenezer “Caruna Bal Vikas” Chennai.

“The workshop session was good, different and practical. The few points that I learnt was to speakless, to be oneself , render help from the receivers perspective and not from the giver. I liked the methodology and the hospitality was good” - Lawrance  David “Caruna Bal Vikas” Chennai.

“The workshop session was a new experience and had a chance to know different organization and intellectual people. It increased my confidence level to continue my job. The few points that I learnt from the workshop was more things through this workshop. I learnt about what is loss and grief, difference between grief and stress and also how to identify the level of depression and grief and also about how one can cope up for one more loss and grief . It was a good opportunity to realize my loss and  grief in my life. I liked the methodology very much. The Hospitality was very good”- Mercy Vinola “Selvi Memorial Illam Society” Chennai.

“The workshop session was very good I learnt a lot personally and for my area of work. The few points that I learnt from the workshop was to personally understand my role (i.e) to be more sensitive to little thing that children bring about and also learnt that every action has something to tell. This helps me to understand the client and also my own family better. The methodology was good. The games could be bit focused but we loved the games. The hospitality was good and the workshop was good and nice. I enjoyed it and it was more a learning process and learnt a new concept” - Samuel Pradheep Rajah “Caruna Bal Vikas” Chennai.

“The workshop was excellent especially the Oppari Video document was very good and new and it also shows the importance in a particular situation (death). The few points I learnt from the workshop was handling of crisis situation, pointing out a criticism in a very right manner. I also learnt about the ritual connection to the context” - Siva kumar “ Sangama” Chennai.

“The workshop session was very good and I felt very comfortable, language was very clear and fluent. Maintaining time was good and nothing was wrong. The few points that I learnt from the workshop was to understand the difference between grief, loss, depression and stress. I also learnt about the different types of grief and how o overcome loss/ grief. I like the methodology it made me comfortable and happy. The hospitality was good and the atmosphere was relaxed and homely. Some of the suggestion and comments is that all the best for your continuous session. Make policy and strategies charges for our social services in border perspective” - Daisy David “World Vision India” Chennai.