Paul Hogan

In the war-torn areas of eastern Sri Lanka, Paul Hogan and his colleagues are providing a space where traumatized children can address the damage within themselves through their surroundings and where they can learn to lead their society on a path toward reconciliation and healing.

Paul Hogan is conceiving a way for child victims of war in Sri Lanka to connect with their inner psychological selves via the outer material world. By helping war-affected communities to establish institutions to deliver locally devised therapy to traumatized children, Paul Hogan is planting the seeds for a healthy, nonviolent, and tolerant society. His techniques, which are constantly evolving, rely on participants' creativity rather than on large amounts of resources.
Paul has established the Butterfly Peace Garden in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka, as a psychological cue for safety. Amid the destruction of war, the garden is a refuge. Here children from warring communities are brought together, encouraged to free their imaginations and share them with others. Over time, the children embark on journeys of self-exploration with important consequences for themselves and their peers. The garden and its programs are in every respect shaped by the wants and interests of its child clients, rather than by adult expectations of what children need, as in conventional psychological institutions. In the garden the children are the "natural leaders." The garden is truly and singularly theirs.
The children are also the garden's agents for healing the wider society. Parents, teachers, religious leaders, soldiers, staff at the garden, and passersby are reinvigorated by contact with the child participants. They learn from the children about how to deal with adversity, fear, and conflict. "Ironically, since the very reason for the existence of the Butterfly Garden is the healing of children affected by war, it is the children themselves who are the primary bearers of healing," writes Paul. "Most adults who come to the garden carry more inimical psychological and cultural baggage with them than do the children." It is the children who lead the way out. As the lessons learned in the garden go beyond its wall, the change within leads to change in everyone. It is this continuous flow from the individual to the community that ultimately mends the damage caused by war, and it is the quality that makes the Butterfly Peace Garden a uniquely valuable model.

Since 1983 war in Sri Lanka has left over 60,000 people dead and caused untold misery and destruction, not least of all among children. All sides have used terror tactics with impunity, and civilians living in war zones have been exposed to a relentless cycle of intimidation, extortion, murder, kidnapping, and torture. As communities have found themselves under unprecedented strain, relations between different ethnic and religious groups have broken down. Children themselves have been targets for much of the violence: as recruits, spies, and suspected enemies. Over 300,000 have been displaced, many of whom have lived in overcrowded and squalid "welfare centers" for displaced persons, suffering malnutrition and disease and lack of schooling.

Batticaloa has been torn apart by the conflict. Its majority Tamil and minority Muslim populations had previously lived together harmoniously, but massive intercommunal violence has since triggered a social crisis that has persisted to this day. As hatred and distrust has eroded community ties, Tamil and Muslim children have become estranged. Yet, regardless of race or creed, virtually all have been exposed to the horrors of war. In 1994 a McMaster University team from Canada found that 95 percent of children in the district had personally experienced events that threatened death or serious injury and were at risk of trauma. A great many had witnessed family members or other persons killed or kidnapped, had been separated from loved ones, been displaced by fighting, neglected, and subjected to physical abuse or extreme poverty.

No program had been established to effectively address the massive psychological problems in Batticaloa or elsewhere. Government and nongovernmental agencies have been concerned with meeting basic food, shelter, and physical needs. There have been virtually no provisions for mental health. Moreover, in Sri Lanka anybody who seeks or needs counseling is considered "crazy." For their part, schools are barely functioning and are certainly not equipped to help children deal with complex and sensitive psychological problems.

Paul also sees danger in the possibility that nongovernment and government agencies may get involved in rehabilitation work offering formulaic short-term solutions that do little to address the lifelong scarring experienced by most children in war-ravaged areas. For instance, he notes, "Many programs purport to offer the arts as a tool of healing, but these are not integrated in the unmediated presence of the person." He continues, "At best these applications of art to trauma care are diversions--a form of entertainment. Even when art is used as therapy, it is seldom, if ever, transferred from the individual to the collective and from the collective to the community."

The Butterfly Peace Garden was established–when shells were still falling on Batticaloa–out of sheer determination to build a haven for children away from the battles. With the warring sides having agreed to a ceasefire in 2002, a historic opportunity now exists for the garden to flourish and expand far beyond its wall. The garden blends locally conceived and developed techniques for rehabilitation with those derived from Paul's earlier work as founder of the Spiral Garden in Toronto, a residential center for physically disabled children. It overcomes the stigma associated with psychological counseling by being a beautiful place of play and creativity totally unlike conventional institutions for mental health. It operates by child-driven logic and the decision-making that determines everything from the physical layout to the food served.

The work begins with garden representatives visiting villages and towns and reaching agreements with local leaders and schoolteachers for children to attend the garden. The children who come are selected by the teachers and age from 6 to 16. The Butterfly Bus collects them from places within an hour's distance. Initially, teachers send their most difficult students, but over time, as the children return to school with a marked improvement in their behavior, others are sent. Each program runs for nine months, one day a week. On any given day there will be around 50 children in the garden, working with 14 full-time staff counselors. When engaged in activities, they are usually in a group of 10 or 12. Every group has a mix of boys and girls, Tamils and Muslims: in fact, the garden is the only place in Batticaloa where Tamil and Muslim children are organized to come together and learn from each other.

The program consists of three stages–or "spirals"–that rely on the sustained and unmediated presence of the counselors, "animators," who themselves are victims of the war. The animators are not professionally qualified in child development and psychology; they are trained and guided by professionals from overseas and within Sri Lanka, and most importantly, from their practical experience in the garden. The first spiral that they lead the children through is object-centered play designed to build trusting relationships among the children themselves and with the animators. The activities at this stage are simple and natural: caring for the garden and its animals; painting, singing, and playing. As the children become immersed in creative activities that rekindle their imaginations, the garden and its staff take on a familiar and reassuring presence. At the end of the first spiral the children have the voluntary attention necessary to start the next stage.

In the second spiral the children begin exploring their inner selves. Now the play of the first spiral takes on a new form and meaning. There is a purposeful focus on themes like family, identity, hopes and fears that touch directly children's lives. A qualified counselor gives extra attention to children with special needs, guiding them through their emotions in privacy. Meanwhile, children create complex art forms through deeply introspective methods, and these are interwoven, sometimes collectively, with stories and performance. The children elicit images of their lives, their families, and their society that have a deep resonance both for themselves and for their audience. By the end of the second spiral, the children usually prepare at least one public performance, which concludes the nine-month regular program.

The garden's work reaches the wider community in the third spiral. When the children first enter the garden, its wall offers to protect them from what is outside; in the third phase of the program they courageously carry what they have learned back to their homes. The success of the garden depends upon this third spiral, because for the children to build upon what they have achieved, they and the garden must have a sustained presence outside. Happily, children, parents and teachers often seek this: some parents express deep regret when their child's time at the garden is coming to an end. Teachers also want to maintain links with the garden even when their students are not in attendance, and some have requested training to bring its techniques into their own classes. On the other hand, there are still village leaders refusing to allow children to attend. Still, Paul sees progress: while in the past the leaders simply refused to discuss the matter or made veiled threats, they are now willing to talk about their concerns.

Given its importance, Paul is now concentrating on developing the third spiral. At present, parents and teachers are brought into the garden for exhibits, performances, and joint activities. However, plans are underway for traveling exhibits and theatre, a "graduate" studio for visual arts, and, perhaps most importantly, for "replica" gardens to be established throughout villages in surrounding areas. Paul is also considering expanding the program to adults, especially among those displaced by the war, who could then return to their home communities and act as lay animators. Additionally, he is currently writing a "gardener's handbook," elaborating on the "garden path" technique as a rehabilitation tool.

With the ceasefire comes the possibility for geographic expansion, building on the garden's manifest success in Batticaloa. Paul has received expressions of interest from groups in four other areas of the north and east of Sri Lanka where the conflict has been most intense. While there is a sense of urgency arising from enormous need, Paul is looking to expand the work cautiously: he needs reliable partners who are prepared to go through the in-depth, phased training necessary to make the garden technique successful. He is also aware that security throughout these regions remains a problem.

The garden is also inspiring others overseas. At a time when the demands for effective treatment of traumatized children are growing the world over, creative and original solutions seem to be in increasingly short supply. Little wonder that a stream of academics, professionals, and nongovernmental organizations from around the world come to learn from the garden and freely offer technical advice and skills. Mental health professionals, educators, therapists, artists, performers, and social scientists have discovered commonality in their work through the garden. One remarks, "I have served as a special advisor on humanitarian issues for the Canadian Government during its tenure on the U.N. Security Council and as an expert on peace-building and conflict resolution for the OECD DAC Working Group on Conflict, Peace and Development Cooperation. I received my Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, and have held teaching positions in universities inside and outside North America. Yet, I have learned more from Paul Hogan about integrity and the essence of peace building over the past five years than all of this accumulated experience combined." With no shortage of enthusiastic assistance from such advocates, Paul is now looking to create an endowment fund to support expansion of the garden's work, including the possibility of an international or regional training center. Paul envisions that this institute would conduct 18-month programs for persons from other places of conflict to learn the techniques used in the garden through a combination of theory and practice. To that end, Paul has been raising funds for the garden through a Canadian arts group and by selling books of the children's stories as well as reproductions of their paintings.

Paul Hogan first came to Sri Lanka in 1994 as part of an exploratory mission sponsored by the McMaster University Health Reach Program to consider establishing programs to address the needs of war-affected children. During that time he met and discussed possibilities with health professionals, academics, and artists. In Batticaloa he visited orphanages, held a public forum, and conducted a short investigative training program. Meanwhile, Health Reach tested some of Paul's techniques in two nearby communities that had been seriously affected by intercommunal conflict and saw good results. The Jesuit father, Paul Satkunanayagam, a highly qualified counselor, who in 1993 had established a mental health center in Batticaloa, invited Health Reach to consider using an abandoned two-acre garden as a site for rehabilitation activities. The following year, he, Paul Hogan, and a committee of representatives from neighboring communities submitted a proposal to the Canadian government to fund the Butterfly Peace Garden. The funding was granted, and in 1996 the work began. In its initial three years, progress was slow, as many community leaders were suspicious of the garden's motives, and the methods were still being locally adapted and developed to suit the children. In the subsequent four years, however, the garden enjoyed considerable success, and to date over 1,300 children have participated in its programs.

"The journey to Batticaloa and the Butterfly Peace Garden began 20 years ago in 1983," Paul recalls. It began when he founded the Spiral Garden for children with physical disabilities at the MacMillan Medical Center in Toronto. The Spiral Garden is a 40-bed residential center, which merges artistic and medical techniques for rehabilitation, emphasizing family and community involvement. It has received praise internationally as a highly successful and innovative model. Many of its approaches have been adopted elsewhere, and since 1997 another site replicating the Spiral Garden has been successfully developed in Canada.

Both the Butterfly Peace Garden and the Spiral Garden represent Paul Hogan's unwavering commitment to creative healing as a life calling. "I have not had a job in over thirty years... Maybe you could call it a journey. Maybe it is a mission. Probably both," he reflects.