Spotlight on Healing and Refuge at Bates College

In this month’s spotlight, we turn to two projects at IA Member institution Bates College: one that focuses on Creating Refuge and the other, Ka Bogso: Be Healed, that celebrates healing and growth as a shared journey rooted in community. Both projects showcase the importance and the impact of community-engaged research and collaboration across institutions.

Ka Bogso: Be Healed

The Ka Bogso (being healed) project features a multi-year collaboration between Somali community leader and longtime community partner Fowsia Musse of Maine Community Integration, Harward Center Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Psychology Yun Garrison, and public artist Won Kyoung Lee, and celebrates healing and growth as a shared journey rooted in community.

In the words of IA National Advisory Board member Darby Ray, who drew our attention to this project, through this exciting community-engaged research collaboration the project partners…

“developed a psychological theory of trauma healing for Somali women refugees, and then… [created] images that would bring that theory alive so that Somali women in our community can engage with it and see their experiences made visible. Two exhibit showings — one on the Bates campus and one in a downtown gallery — prompted all kinds of fabulous individual interactions with the exhibit, as well as opportunities for different sectors of the community to learn about each other’s experiences.”

Darby Ray

Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and
Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement at Bates College

Centered on the Five Rs: Running, Resettlement, Residual Stagnation, Reconciliation, and Resolution, this theory offers a pathway for inter-generational healing and growth. Listen to Fowsia Musse in the video below to learn more.

Based on the Five Rs, artist Won Kyoung-Lee created five 22 x 28 inch panels using acrylic paints and fabrics gathered from Garrison’s home in South Korea (including pieces that belonged to her grandmother). Audiences were encouraged to touch and interact with the paintings at the opening exhibition at Munka Studio in Lewiston, Maine. The paintings were accompanied by artifacts from pastoral Somali cultures that represented hospitality and generosity.

“Our conversations quickly developed into a meaningful connection as we shared experiences of living in the U.S. as women of color and discussed the shared cultural values found in both Somali and South Korean communities …[quantitative] psychological methods may not fully capture the experiences of people from the Global South or the relational aspects of knowledge production… [this project rethinks] how psychological methods can be transformed to find the answers that communities truly need”

Yun Garrison,

Harward Center Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Psychology*

Creating Refuge: IA Collaboratory

The IA-funded Creating Refuge Collaboratory explores how Community Engagement Centers (CECs) on undergraduate campuses can be spaces for community care, resiliency practice, and creative resistance for young people.

Members of this collaboratory include CECs across multiple institutions: The Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates College, Macalester College’s Community Engagement Center, Carleton College’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement, McKeen Center for the Common Good at Bowdin College, and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

Participants from the Creating Refuge Collaboratory have greatly benefited from the opportunities to connect as thought partners to similar portfolios of work, building strategic resources for training students and communities on grassroots organizing. As they shift into the next phase of their work, each campus continues to develop their collaboratory project – experimenting around arts and culture to support community resiliency, and to renew youth civic engagement within their local communities. Check out the IA Collaboratories page for ongoing updates about this project.

_{^{* From the article: Ka Bogso (Be Healed): Experience the Transformative Power of Community-Engaged Research through Art, The Bates Student (Oct 2024).}}