Music as Therapy International - Ethiopia 🇪🇹

#Music_as_Therapy International - Ethiopia 🇪🇹

#Background
👉Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa, is a country rich in history and culture. Music plays a huge part culturally with around 80 different ethnic groups being associated with unique sounds through their music.

👉Despite developments being made within the healthcare system in Ethiopia, the health system still lacks facilities and trained professionals, especially in therapeutic fields. The experience of using music as a therapeutic tool for health and wellbeing purposes by individuals on a professional level or by any organisations are non-existent. This is something we have been invited to change.

#Activities_and_Impact_to_Date
👉In early 2016, Ethiopian Surgeon and Musician Dr. #Melkamu_Meazasent us an expression of interest for Introductory Training for care professionals in his network who he felt would welcome the opportunity to learn how music can be used within care and treatment.

👉In 2017, we #visited_Ethiopia to undertake a feasibility study for three care settings: Gefersa Mental Health Rehabilitation Centre, Hospice Ethiopia and the Ethiopian National Association on Intellectual Disabilities (ENAID). A year later after the feasibility study, in 2018, music therapist Hannah Berhanu and Lily Blows-Poliwoda (the assistant) delivered our first projects ever in Ethiopia.

1. #Gefersa_Mental_Health_Rehabilitation Centre is the only mental health rehabilitation institution in the whole of Ethiopia, located about 20km northwest of Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa. At Gefersa Mental Health Rehabilitation Centre, 4 staff were trained and 5 adults participated in sessions. The Centre offers professional psychiatric treatment, boarding and rehabilitative occupational therapy to 162 patients, who will also now have access to music sessions.

2. #ENAID is a local not-for-profit and parental association, which provides services for 80 children and adults with a range of disabilities at its day care centre in Addis Ababa. 4 staff as well as 2 board members of ENAID, and 10 children and adults with disabilities participated in the training. ENAID also serves around 400 children with special needs at its outreach sites in public schools and so 6 additional staff from the public schools also took part in the training. Therefore, 480 children and adults with disabilities all could potentially benefit from music.

3. #Hospice_Ethiopia was founded in 2003 and is the first and only hospice in Ethiopia, also located in Addis Ababa. Its aim is to improve the quality of life of patients with incurable diseases particularly cancer and/or HIV and AIDS, and the patients’ families through provision of palliative care and support services. Every Thursday during the project delivery, 6 staff were trained with 14 adults taking part in sessions. Hospice Ethiopia provides care to around 40 additional people who also stand to benefit from access to the music programme.

#Current_Activities
👉We are currently preparing to return this year for a #Follow_Up Visit whereby we can encourage our Local Partners with their music sessions and find out what other ways we can support them in developing their music programmes.
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“Music is like our medicine. When I am playing music I have no pain, I am not sick.”

“100% overwhelmed by the results of your hard work in realizing the first ever music health project in Ethiopia. Keep it up guys!”
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http://www.musicastherapy.org/about/where-we-work/ethiopia?fbclid=IwAR1qpj823gFuewIoact4on19G89iWgPpbrI8424WOb8QnQUThKc-4lnFAko

Final Blog Post from Ethiopia

Posted in Blog on 23rd November 2018

Wow! It is hard to believe that it is our last day out in Ethiopia – we don’t think the realisation has hit us that we will be on a plane flying back to the UK tonight. This last week has been extremely busy; organising celebration events for each of the centres to recognise all their hard work over the 6 weeks. Each celebration was very different but they all shared one thing in common – the kindness and feelings of warmth and appreciation from everyone we have worked with was amazing.

We started the celebrations with a ceremony at ENAID on Tuesday. In the morning, we ran our final teacher workshop with 10 special need teachers. Following this, we ate our final shiro and injera together before all gathering outside to award certificates and present a handbook that we have made. There was music playing and the adults that attend the centre were all dancing and singing, buna was being drunk and it was a lovely atmosphere. The centre is such a beautiful place to be and it was very hard to say goodbye! The handbook is something we have written for every centre. It includes information about music therapy, covers all of the activities we have done over the 6 weeks and gives advice on tips for running sessions and future work. Each one is personalised to suit the centres needs. On Wednesday, we travelled to Gefersa to say our goodbyes there. It was an equally lovely celebration with more buna and certificate presentations! Of course, lots of great photos were also taken! Finally, yesterday we said goodbye to Hospice Ethiopia. It is hard to explain to someone what an incredible place the Hospice is – the staff are always full of joy and love and it feels so peaceful to be there. We couldn’t have asked for a better to place to have our final music session out in Addis (this time round…!)

In total, we have trained 3 psychiatric nurses, 6 palliative care nurses, 9 special need teachers, 3 volunteers and one board representative from ENAID. We have worked with 3 adults with mental health needs, 10 adults with intellectual disabilities and roughly 14 adults who have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDs and/or cancer ourselves, but our focus has always been on how our Local Partners can work with many, many more people after we go. I think there are going to be many great plans made for these centres and we cannot wait to see how their relationship with music therapy evolves over the years.

We are so grateful to Music as Therapy International for giving us the opportunity to come out here and run the project. Also, to all three of the charities out here for welcoming us with such open minds and kind hearts. We would also like to say a massive thank you to Dr Melkamu for contacting the charity and assisting in the implementation of the first music therapy project out in Ethiopia. We are truly honoured to be a part of such amazing work.  

Ciao for the last time and here’s to making music therapy happen around the world!

Lily Blows-Paliwoda and Hannah Berhanu

http://www.musicastherapy.org/news/final-blog-post-from-ethiopia?fbclid=IwAR2DQXEK-Kh1xxB_bvDCgtWq2xzuVDOiPP7sVPIyHW5ZPQ2lpSxryDqjBNE