Friday 31 March 2017


MEET THE PEOPLE!!


Opening Session
Friday, April 7, 2017

The Choir of the Loaves and Fish 


The Choir of the Loaves and Fish is a team of spirited senior citizens aged 65-95 from the Holy Spirit Home on Bannerghatta Road. This initiative is the brainchild of Pervin Varma, former CEO of Child Rights and You (CRY), along with Regina Thomas, who started CRY in Bengaluru. 

The choir’s name was inspired by the story of Jesus feeding five thousand people with just five loaves and two fish offered by a young boy! Similarly the members bring their gifts and trust that they will be a blessing to the community. The idea is to bring meaning and hope into their lives through the process of making music and singing together! 

The choir performs two concerts a year on Independence Day and Christmas. This is their 11th performance in 5 years!




Keynote Speaker: Ulrike Reinhard



Picture credit:Vicky Roy

“There are some people whose lives followed the logic of dynamic networks long before the internet appeared. In my time I’ve met a handful of characters who were digital natives in a much more radical sense than their date of birth might lead you to think. Ulrike Reinhard is one of them. She has the genius to be able to think and act in terms of interaction. In conversation with her, it’s easy to forget about set agendas and fixed outcomes and follow wherever the dynamics of open processes might lead.

Ulrike is a catalyst for collective intelligence and a network enabler who forges direct links that connect people. She’s a virtuoso across the whole repertoire of modern communication technologies who would still be adding more reality to the WE in this world if she had to use smoke signals and pigeon post to do so. Ulrike is an impassioned maverick with an astonishing faith in her ability to find her way even in new and uncharted territory. She seldom follows a steady straight line but always shows an unflappable sense of direction. Like the path she’s carved through life, Ulrike is never boring and always good for a surprise!”
- Prof. Peter Kruse

THEME
Hakuna Matata: Play and Therapy

Moderator:Dr. Shudhada Maitra

Dr. Shubhada Maitra is Professor with the Centre for Health and Mental Health, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. At TISS she is engaged in teaching, research and field action. She teaches courses on mental health, counselling and therapy, qualitative research and child and adolescent mental health. Her areas of research include issues of mental health, sexual violence, gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health. 
She is the Project Director of two field action projects at TISS: Tarasha, a community-based recovery project for women living with mental disorders and Muskaan, child and adolescent guidance centre of TISS. 

She has published nationally and internationally in peer-reviewed journals and has written two books, one on HIV/AIDS at the beginning of the HIV epidemic in India in 1992 and the other on Play and experiential methodologies of working with children in developmental and therapeutic settings.


Panelists


Harish Bhuvan

Founder,Compassionate Clowns



Harish Bhuvan is a trainer, facilitator and medical clown. He left his job at IIT Bombay to follow his passion of contributing towards the well being of children. Since then he has been attached with esteemed hospitals and hospices of India working with terminally ill children and their caregivers. His unique mélange of clowning elements and counseling techniques to release the disease induced trauma in children has been admired in media and public alike. He founded an organization Compassionate Clowns which is doing remarkable task of spreading love and laughter in the life of vulnerable children.

Dr. Sonya Lorelle

Play Therapist and National Certified Counselor. Professor, Governors State University


Dr. Sonya Lorelle is a registered Play Therapist and National Certified Counsellor. She bridges theory with practice. She is a Professor at the Governors State University, in Chicago’s Southland. But she is also a practitioner who travels overseas. Her counselling interventions have taken her overseas- Bhutan and Thailand. Her areas of expertise include Play therapy, effects of trauma on children, child development, and qualitative methodology. She has conducted assessments, intakes, crisis intervention, parenting consultations and individual counseling sessions with children staying in homeless shelter. She provided monthly trainings to children’s services staff on various topics such as ages and stages, positive discipline, promoting healthy development and effects of trauma on children. She also works with college students. Since 2011, she has volunteered in Bhutan. She has demonstrated ability to work with children on a variety of issues, including depression, anxiety, divorce, trauma and domestic violence. During her interventions in Bhutan, she worked in schools and at the psychiatric hospital consulting, training, and providing direct services. She also provided a week-long workshop on Mental Health Facilitation to helpers and professionals in the country. Recently, she was in Thailand for three weeks where she gave training on play therapy.



Maitri Gopalakrishnan

Drama Therapist and Counseling Psychologist



Maitri Gopalakrishna has a masters degree in Counselling Psychology with a concentration in Drama Therapy from the California Institute from Integral Studies, San Francisco. She is currently working on PhD from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai where she is doing practice­-research with Child Sexual Abuse Survivors within a Feminist theoretical and methodological lens. As part of this work, she collaboratively created a theatre performance called Positively Shameless that has been performed nine times in three cities. Maitri also practices as a counselling psychologist and drama therapist who works with individuals and groups at Parivarthan Counselling Training and Research Centre and is faculty on the Foundation Course in Expressive and Creative Arts Therapies (FECAT) run by the Studio for Movement Arts and Therapies, Bangalore. She lives and works in Bangalore. Drama Therapy is an umbrella term that encompasses several different methodologies and pracitisoners. Maitri today considers herself an intersectional Feminist therapist. In addition, "play" holds a central position in her practice as well as a conceptualisation of people as role takers and players that have the power to powerfully shape and re-shape their own narratives.




Dr. Nithya Poornima

Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS



Dr. Nithya is a trained Clinical Psychologist, having experience working with children and adolescents. She is currently employed as Assistant professor with the Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, India. Parenting, fostering emotional well-being and resilience, early childhood enrichment, play and creative expressive methods of intervention, yoga and mindfulness are some of my current areas of interest. Training of mental health professionals and self-care among mental health professionals are other areas of interest.
Dr. Aneesh Kumar
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Christ University

Aneesh Kumar P, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Christ University, Bengaluru. He has worked as project officer for Indian Council for Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) in Pondicherry University and as Head, Department of Psychology, Wadi Huda Institute of Research and Advanced Studies affiliated to Kannur University, Kerala. He has published and presented papers in various national and international forums in the area of public health, child and adolescent psychology. Currently he is also involved in various research project including developing a training model for culturally competent and evidence-based mental health care for diverse societies (United States-India Education Foundation), developing character strength among primary school students through classroom teaching, and socialization of emotion and construal of anxiety and depression among mothers (a multi country project). His research interest include development psychology, child mental health,and school counselling programs.He teaches papers in child and adolescent counselling, counselling interventions for special population, development psychology and qualitative research methods.

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