Mekong Cultural Hub

It’s for both. It teaches you how to care for yourself, which is crucial when you are trying to help others. It focuses on skills to enable you to respond to your community, colleagues, friends, and family with compassion and skill, particularly in crisis situations. It’s not about becoming a therapist or counselor but providing first-line support and knowing how to get additional help if needed.

The primary purpose of this course is to equip you to respond to others. If you are going through something difficult in your own life, this course can provide some tools and skills, but it is not a substitute for therapy or professional help. When in a trauma or crisis state, it is very difficult for us to learn. So if you are currently in this kind of situation, please consider whether this is the right time for you to apply, or whether it might be better to apply in the future when you are feeling more resourced and able to be in a learning environment.

The training covers skills such as: empathy, communication, listening, reassuring, and compassion. It also includes how to stay calm in a crisis, reflective practice, and using creative journaling as a tool. Participants will learn through group discussions, creative responses to topics, and understanding your relationship to the subject using various methods and creative processes.

The skills learned in the training will help you to effectively care for yourself and others, especially in crisis situations. This includes recognizing your limits, knowing when to seek additional support, and developing confidence in your ability to navigate challenging situations.

While the course uses some tools and techniques from art therapy, it is not an art therapy training. It focuses on using creative methods to understand emotions, life experiences, and how to respond to others effectively.

There are no specific qualifications or experiences that applicants need to have. If you check the Program Overview you can find more detail about the eligibility and selection criteria. Overall our main priority in the selection is trying to select the people we believe we can best help through this training at this time. That’s why in the application our questions are to try to understand what has motivated you to apply for the program and what you hope to benefit from it. We will also consider building a group that we believe will work well together. Selection in this case is not at all about good or bad or qualified/ not-qualified, but it’s our way to prioritise how we use the resources we have available.

The program is based on the group of 8 participants having time and trust to share and exchange experiences and support each other. For this reason, we will not have observers in the training.

Creating a safe space and keeping confidentiality among each other is important in this workshop. There are some tips in the application form about how to share experiences while also maintaining confidentiality. A group agreement will be created with the participants at the beginning of the training.

The training will be in English as we will have a mixed group of nationalities. The majority of participants will have English as their second, third or fourth language – so there is no expectation you are perfect. You should feel comfortable enough to try to express yourself, and to listen to others. The training will use a lot of creative tools and methods that should be accessible to anyone without needing to rely on language. We don’t expect there to be a lot of technical terms, but if they are introduced, efforts will be made to ensure everyone understands. You can also contact MCH during the application process if you would like to talk to us directly about your own concerns about your comfort with using English and whether it will be enough.

There will be Creative Journaling sessions where participants can use any creative skill they like such as poetry, writing, making art, photography, video, music or anything they feel enables them to  reflect on themselves and to communicate and express.

There is no limitation in applying, but as both the workshops are happening at a similar time and require quite a significant commitment, we would only offer a place on one if you are selected. We recommend you apply for the one which is most relevant or needed for you at this time. But if you do decide to apply for both, please let us know which one is your first preference.