Kitabna - Our Book CIC’s Post

It was such a great moment to come together with our project partners and participants of our 2023 training in Yerevan to launch the Kitabna toolkit for story-writing with communities affected by conflict and disaster last weekend. Developing this toolkit and this event with David, Arpine, Liana and Asia with the support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council was the perfect way to celebrate 10 years of Kitabna - Our Book CIC - making our work ever more available. We learnt so much last week when we interviewed our participants, Ani, Narine, Lilit, Gohar and learnt about their use of the toolkit in their psychological practice with children across Armenia over the past year. We heard that Kitabna’s tools could be part of acceptance commitment therapy, a process in which a person can uncover the values and goals they have, and in knowing make their life better and more stable. We also heard how the toolkit offered a structured approach to storytelling therapies, with easy-to-follow steps, and that it could potentially be used in schools in Armenia.   We heard how story creation allowed children to use characters to express their emotions, and problems, and through the characters find their own solutions. This created a distance for the child which allowed for helpful perspective. At the launch we hosted Mariam who has been piloting the toolkit with children and teenagers in Berdavan, a village on the border with Azerbaijan. They all came to the launch and we heard their beautiful stories. We asked the children what they would tell other children about writing a story and making a book with out toolkit. They said:   “It gives us experience; individuality; we are getting to know ourselves; speaking our mind and controlling how it comes out on paper. We are trying to understand what skills we have and are working on those skills. We are learning how to work on a text, what pictures to use, what kinds of words to use, where to write them, how to finish a book. Working together on this book allowed us to enjoy the experience and make friends and we learnt a lot from each other. We could also network, gain popularity (!) and learn more, developing new skills just as we do every day in our life – trying to be better.”   “When asked what we would advise to little children and our peers, we would say just start writing because maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s right, but it really helps to put your thinking on paper. It will work out in the end.”   “When we wrote the stories it was a way to find out more about our culture, because I wrote about our village and I learnt a lot about my village and told other people about our village. And a lot of people outside of our village don’t know about the stories written in our book." Our toolkit is freely available to download from MHPSS.net: https://lnkd.in/g8ZAqJ5g