InFocus Magazine

Most of us are familiar with the rending emotions we feel when we hear about atrocities taking place around the world.  We are horrified, rehabilitation
shaken, therapist
depressed.  Sometimes we feel there is no sense going on with our daily lives—surely, we should drop everything and devote ourselves to helping alleviate all this suffering!

But we generally do carry on as usual, perhaps making a donation or attending a fundraiser, and somehow the disturbance in our hearts eases as the mass media moves on to other topics.

Linda Weech, however, is an exception.  Six years ago, when the news came out about the Rwandan genocide spilling over into the Congo, she truly did drop everything and devote herself to reaching out.

Weech had no idea what she would do—she just knew she had to act.  That passionate commitment has evolved into the Children’s International Peace Project (CIPP), founded and run by Weech, aided by a wide circle of supporters.

Taking as its starting point Mahatma Ghandi’s oft-quoted statement, “If we are to have real peace in the world, we must begin with the children,” the CIPP reaches out to the children of Central Africa and Central America, supporting their well-being through expressive arts, multicultural wellness training, and peace and environmental education.

The Children’s International Peace Project has become the driving force for Weech’s life.  An artist and art educator by profession, Weech now channels those skills to her international work.  She spends her days and evenings researching, networking, and developing curricula.  She has travelled to Guatemala, Burundi, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where she visits schools, orphanages, refugee camps, rescue centres, and other hotspots of need, sharing, listening and facilitating programs.

So that all this can happen, Weech has simplified her life.  “It truly is chop wood, carry water,” she says.  She has scaled down her paid employment to the bare minimum to make time for her aid work and readily admits that ‘financial stability’ is non-existent in her life.

Weech is not complaining about any of this.  On the contrary, she says she has never felt so alive.  “I’m up at 5:00 am every morning, energized, motivated, tremendously excited about my day.  It’s an honor to be doing this work.”

It is also deeply painful.  “Over-the-top heartwrenching” is how Weech describes the trauma she has witnessed.  An orphanage full of children who all have been accused of “witchcraft,” raped and often tortured.  A four-year-old orphan with bones like sticks who can’t walk due to life-long malnutrition.   Girls as young as eight facing severe health problems—not to mention psycho-emotional trauma—from genital mutilation and early forced marriage.

The work is also over-the-top heart-warming, as Weech gets to meet the “angels on the ground,” as she calls them—the brave and hardworking people who, like her, have dedicated themselves to healing and change.

But it was the wrenching of her heart that moved Weech to action.  Weech had spent two years in the DRC prior to the conflict there, travelling and working in community development.

“I was so moved by the beauty of the people and nature there.  I travelled 350 kilometres by foot for 22 days, seeing remote communities, way out where people didn’t even have a candle or a piece of paper.   It seemed the farther away from a city or town we were, the more people were integrated with nature and each other.  The luminosity in their eyes moved me so much.”

When the civil war started in the mid 2000s she was back home (she lives part-time on Hornby, Denman, and Vancouver Islands), and was profoundly affected by what she was hearing.

“I was literally lying on the floor of the rainforest, wailing and wailing.  I couldn’t stop the tears,” she says.  “I could not understand how this could be happening— 5.6 million people have died in this conflict, and 1,200 die each day, mostly women and children, from preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria.

“A turning point came for me when a friend warned me that I needed to regulate my emotions or else I was in danger of getting sick.  That galvanized me.”

Weech plunged into research, learning about conditions in the Congo, studying the work of various aid organizations, and learning about people working on the ground in Central Africa.  And she asked herself: What can I do?

The immediate answer to the question came from the many photos Weech had taken during her time in Africa.  These photos documented the spirit and beauty of the people and place which was now being devastated.  Weech produced a set of photographs which she began selling locally.  Naturally, this piqued people’s curiosity and engaged them in the issue.  Friends, family and community members began raising funds in support of Weech’s work.

As a result, Weech sent just over $8,000 to SOS Children’s Villages, a well-respected aid organization.  This was satisfying, but she still felt a strong calling to be involved directly.  She knew that her background in development work and art education could be valuable, but also she felt she needed more, so she went to study multicultural healing techniques with Dr. Patricia Cane.

Cane teaches traditional healing techniques from cultures around the world.  She began over 20 years ago to provide people in Central America with tools to care for themselves in the midst of trauma, violence, poverty, and the effects of natural disasters.  The practices are now used in more than 30 countries in North America, Central America, South America, Indonesia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

With training under her belt, Weech had a variety of resources to offer, and she had a groundwork of local supporters.  It was time to head out.  But to her own surprise, Africa was not her first destination.  Instead, in 2008, she went to Guatemala.

“It seems like this whole journey has been guided by something beyond me and it works best when I just surrender,” she explains.  She ended up in Guatemala because she saw a photograph of a lake on the internet and somehow knew she needed to go there.  When she stepped onto the plane to Guatemala City she knew she was stepping out into the unknown.

“I had no idea how dangerous it could be to land in Guatemala City at night,” she says.  “Luckily for me, a Maya elder sat beside me on the plane.  It was quite incredible.  Outside the plane the sky was pitch black and she started to ask me questions:  Is anyone meeting you at the airport?  Do you speak Spanish?  Do you know what you’ll be doing in Guatemala?

“I said no but that I was looking for some kind of sign to guide me.  She said well, look out the window.  There was a huge lightening storm out there.  Beyond worrying about our safety—here we were in this piece of metal flying through an electrical storm—I was in awe at the beauty, majesty and power of nature.  I’d never been inside a lightning storm before.  She said that in her culture thunderstorms were considered a very good sign.

“It turned out that this woman teaches Maya cosmology and peace studies all over the world, and she has a centre in the highlands which she invited me to!”  With this auspicious start, the whole trip unfolded almost magically for Weech.  Within days she was taking part in a five-day fire ceremony on the banks of Lake Atitlan, sacred to the Maya—the very lake she’d seen on the internet back home.

Weech shared art, storytelling and healing practices at schools, an orphanage, and refugee centre, and she met many inspiring people working tirelessly to improve conditions and promote social justice.

She also listened and learned.  When she returned home, she brought a camera full of photos, a profound appreciation of Mayan culture, and some wonderful new ideas and resources for her future work.

And more than anything, she brought home a deepened awareness of the need to connect with and love nature, and of how much we have to learn from Indigenous people.

Weech, now relocated to Denman Island, shared the art she brought, created by Guatemalan children, with local children and began moving forward with an idea that had come out of her trip: an Eco-Peace Kit that could be distributed to educators, caregivers and activists all over the world, providing guidelines and tools to work with children.

The kit, which is near completion, includes a cornucopia of resources.  Various sets of laminated cards provide ideas and structure for storytelling and theatre: there are animal cards with simple drawings of bees, anteaters, elephants, and more; values and virtues cards with words such as kindness, humor, faith, respect and service; and a set that Weech calls “Heroes and She-roes.” These cards each contain a few paragraphs and a photo telling the story of someone who stood up against injustice.  The teaching manual that goes with the kit gives many ideas of how to use these resources.

These and other teaching aids come in a colorful cloth satchel, which is hand woven and sewn by Mayan families in Guatemala, thus providing income for these people.

In 2010 Weech travelled to Africa, visiting Kenya, Burundi and the DRC.  She had a list of places and people she hoped to connect with, but little idea of how to find them.  “There are generally no phone numbers or addresses for these places.  The amazing thing is once you get there the doors just opened, as if I was being led to exactly where I was meant to be,” says Weech.  She doesn’t worry too much about logistics of travel and accommodation but instead trusts that things will show up, which they do.

“There have been a lot of guardian angels guiding me,” she says.  One of these angels is Mama Feza, who works with the Congolese Pygmy refugees in Burundi.

“The Pygmies have been recognized by international specialists as the world’s most marginalized indigenous people in this time.  Thirty three per cent of the Pygmy population of Rwanda was murdered in the genocide but we never hear about it.  They were chased out of the rainforest by rebel groups, after living there sustainably for thousands of years, and they are treated like non-people.  They are hungry, persecuted in school, and excluded from health care.  One Pygmy man was killed for sport while I was visiting.  Locals say that raping a Pygmy will cure your backache.”

And yet they have so much wisdom to offer, she says.  “They are known as one of the world’s most peaceful societies, resolving conflict mainly through humor and group consultation.  They know many of the natural medicines in the rainforest and have a profound love and respect for nature.  They are now living in desperate situations.”

Weech vividly remembers visiting a Pygmy refugee camp in Burundi after the Chief had invited her to lead the children through some art-making activities.  He had told her to expect 150 kids; she prepped for 450 but there were even more.  “They surrounded me so eagerly.  We had to snap all the crayons in three so everyone got one, and they were so excited!”

Weech asked the Pygmies what they most needed, and they answered food and education.  So she worked with them to establish a peace garden with nutritional and medicinal plants and trees, as well as a traditional beekeeping project.

The education component is also coming on-stream as Weech recently found a donor to fund a simple schoolhouse.

Weech also connected with the Masai people, another rich ancient culture facing extreme persecution.  Again, she learned that gardening could provide a key means of support, but it had to be adapted to the severe drought climate.  She responded by helping plant sack gardens at an orphanage and school, something she continues to support by spreading information and sending funds.

A sack garden costs next to nothing and can include up to 70 plants, not just helping feed a family but also bringing in some income.  “This is ideal for communities where there is not enough energy—even if there were enough water—for a full-scale garden.  I’m talking about communities devastated by drought, AIDS and famine, where many households are headed by grandmothers or children.”

Weech has also inspired others to take her ideas and materials on their travels.  Although she is undoubtedly the driving force behind the Children’s International Peace Project, her vision, and the way the project is growing, is very much decentralized.

“There are no passengers here on spaceship earth; we are all crew, to quote Buckminster Fuller,” she says with a laugh.   She feels she receives as much, or more, than she gives.

“These children as so amazing, so tuned into their intuition and spirit in ways that we have often forgotten.  Their strength and resilience is so incredibly inspiring.

“I remember Jorge, a street orphan in a Guatemalan village,” she continues.  “His grandma supports the family by making friendship bracelets.  He’s a growing boy, and he never really gets enough food.  One day I managed to give him a muffin.  I have never seen anyone bite into something with such urgency.  You could see he was ravenous.  We were walking along and there was a tiny toddler in the middle of the path with red hair, a sign of malnutrition.  Jorge’s face lit up and he kneeled down in front of the boy with his hands out and offered half the muffin.  The toddler took it, then Jorge wrapped his arms around him and said with great pride, ‘Linda, this is my cousin.’ What a teaching about generosity, connectedness and compassion!”

Another beautiful and moving moment came at a centre for homeless children in Guatemala.  “One evening, I told the kids there a bit about what was going on in the lives of children in the Congo.  The next morning I got up and went outside and all the orphans were there, singing and dancing for the children of Africa.”

Weech is currently home on her trio of Islands, putting together the final touches on the Eco-Peace Kits, sharing her photos and stories, and staying in touch with her increasingly large network of supporters and partners, open to whatever happens next as things unfold in wondrous ways.

She draws strength from the incredible beauty of the natural world around her and the amazing support of the many people who have contributed to her work.  “I want to express my profound gratitude for the love, encouragement and support from family, friends, students and colleagues,” she says.  “The reason I do this work is to bring realization of our oneness.  It’s all about loving and connecting to nature and honoring the connection between all of us.”

For more information, to get involved, or to book Linda to give an audio-visual presentation about her work, go to www.LindaWeech.com or email [email protected].

For more information about Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

• www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_57796.html
• http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011/democratic-republic-congo

For good sources of global humanitarian news:

• www.irinnews.org
• www.trust.org/alertnet/

For information on child soldiers in the DRC:

• www.child-soldier.org/child-soldiers-in-drc

For information about the Congolese Pygmies:

• www.trust.org/alertnet/news/drc-displacement-and-discrimination-150-the-lot-of-the-bambuti-pygmies

For the opportunity to sponsor a child in the DRC:

• www.child-sponsorship.com/

Most of us are familiar with the rending emotions we feel when we hear about atrocities taking place around the world.  We are horrified, clinic
shaken, depressed.  Sometimes we feel there is no sense going on with our daily lives—surely, we should drop everything and devote ourselves to helping alleviate all this suffering!

But we generally do carry on as usual, perhaps making a donation or attending a fundraiser, and somehow the disturbance in our hearts eases as the mass media moves on to other topics.

Linda Weech, however, is an exception.  Six years ago, when the news came out about the Rwandan genocide spilling over into the Congo, she truly did drop everything and devote herself to reaching out.

Weech had no idea what she would do—she just knew she had to act.  That passionate commitment has evolved into the Children’s International Peace Project (CIPP), founded and run by Weech, aided by a wide circle of supporters.

Taking as its starting point Mahatma Ghandi’s oft-quoted statement, “If we are to have real peace in the world, we must begin with the children,” the CIPP reaches out to the children of Central Africa and Central America, supporting their well-being through expressive arts, multicultural wellness training, and peace and environmental education.

The Children’s International Peace Project has become the driving force for Weech’s life.  An artist and art educator by profession, Weech now channels those skills to her international work.  She spends her days and evenings researching, networking, and developing curricula.  She has travelled to Guatemala, Burundi, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where she visits schools, orphanages, refugee camps, rescue centres, and other hotspots of need, sharing, listening and facilitating programs.

So that all this can happen, Weech has simplified her life.  “It truly is chop wood, carry water,” she says.  She has scaled down her paid employment to the bare minimum to make time for her aid work and readily admits that ‘financial stability’ is non-existent in her life.

Weech is not complaining about any of this.  On the contrary, she says she has never felt so alive.  “I’m up at 5:00 am every morning, energized, motivated, tremendously excited about my day.  It’s an honor to be doing this work.”

It is also deeply painful.  “Over-the-top heartwrenching” is how Weech describes the trauma she has witnessed.  An orphanage full of children who all have been accused of “witchcraft,” raped and often tortured.  A four-year-old orphan with bones like sticks who can’t walk due to life-long malnutrition.   Girls as young as eight facing severe health problems—not to mention psycho-emotional trauma—from genital mutilation and early forced marriage.

The work is also over-the-top heart-warming, as Weech gets to meet the “angels on the ground,” as she calls them—the brave and hardworking people who, like her, have dedicated themselves to healing and change.

But it was the wrenching of her heart that moved Weech to action.  Weech had spent two years in the DRC prior to the conflict there, travelling and working in community development.

“I was so moved by the beauty of the people and nature there.  I travelled 350 kilometres by foot for 22 days, seeing remote communities, way out where people didn’t even have a candle or a piece of paper.   It seemed the farther away from a city or town we were, the more people were integrated with nature and each other.  The luminosity in their eyes moved me so much.”

When the civil war started in the mid 2000s she was back home (she lives part-time on Hornby, Denman, and Vancouver Islands), and was profoundly affected by what she was hearing.

“I was literally lying on the floor of the rainforest, wailing and wailing.  I couldn’t stop the tears,” she says.  “I could not understand how this could be happening— 5.6 million people have died in this conflict, and 1,200 die each day, mostly women and children, from preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria.

“A turning point came for me when a friend warned me that I needed to regulate my emotions or else I was in danger of getting sick.  That galvanized me.”

Weech plunged into research, learning about conditions in the Congo, studying the work of various aid organizations, and learning about people working on the ground in Central Africa.  And she asked herself: What can I do?

The immediate answer to the question came from the many photos Weech had taken during her time in Africa.  These photos documented the spirit and beauty of the people and place which was now being devastated.  Weech produced a set of photographs which she began selling locally.  Naturally, this piqued people’s curiosity and engaged them in the issue.  Friends, family and community members began raising funds in support of Weech’s work.

As a result, Weech sent just over $8,000 to SOS Children’s Villages, a well-respected aid organization.  This was satisfying, but she still felt a strong calling to be involved directly.  She knew that her background in development work and art education could be valuable, but also she felt she needed more, so she went to study multicultural healing techniques with Dr. Patricia Cane.

Cane teaches traditional healing techniques from cultures around the world.  She began over 20 years ago to provide people in Central America with tools to care for themselves in the midst of trauma, violence, poverty, and the effects of natural disasters.  The practices are now used in more than 30 countries in North America, Central America, South America, Indonesia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

With training under her belt, Weech had a variety of resources to offer, and she had a groundwork of local supporters.  It was time to head out.  But to her own surprise, Africa was not her first destination.  Instead, in 2008, she went to Guatemala.

“It seems like this whole journey has been guided by something beyond me and it works best when I just surrender,” she explains.  She ended up in Guatemala because she saw a photograph of a lake on the internet and somehow knew she needed to go there.  When she stepped onto the plane to Guatemala City she knew she was stepping out into the unknown.

“I had no idea how dangerous it could be to land in Guatemala City at night,” she says.  “Luckily for me, a Maya elder sat beside me on the plane.  It was quite incredible.  Outside the plane the sky was pitch black and she started to ask me questions:  Is anyone meeting you at the airport?  Do you speak Spanish?  Do you know what you’ll be doing in Guatemala?

“I said no but that I was looking for some kind of sign to guide me.  She said well, look out the window.  There was a huge lightening storm out there.  Beyond worrying about our safety—here we were in this piece of metal flying through an electrical storm—I was in awe at the beauty, majesty and power of nature.  I’d never been inside a lightning storm before.  She said that in her culture thunderstorms were considered a very good sign.

“It turned out that this woman teaches Maya cosmology and peace studies all over the world, and she has a centre in the highlands which she invited me to!”  With this auspicious start, the whole trip unfolded almost magically for Weech.  Within days she was taking part in a five-day fire ceremony on the banks of Lake Atitlan, sacred to the Maya—the very lake she’d seen on the internet back home.

Weech shared art, storytelling and healing practices at schools, an orphanage, and refugee centre, and she met many inspiring people working tirelessly to improve conditions and promote social justice.

She also listened and learned.  When she returned home, she brought a camera full of photos, a profound appreciation of Mayan culture, and some wonderful new ideas and resources for her future work.

And more than anything, she brought home a deepened awareness of the need to connect with and love nature, and of how much we have to learn from Indigenous people.

Weech, now relocated to Denman Island, shared the art she brought, created by Guatemalan children, with local children and began moving forward with an idea that had come out of her trip: an Eco-Peace Kit that could be distributed to educators, caregivers and activists all over the world, providing guidelines and tools to work with children.

The kit, which is near completion, includes a cornucopia of resources.  Various sets of laminated cards provide ideas and structure for storytelling and theatre: there are animal cards with simple drawings of bees, anteaters, elephants, and more; values and virtues cards with words such as kindness, humor, faith, respect and service; and a set that Weech calls “Heroes and She-roes.” These cards each contain a few paragraphs and a photo telling the story of someone who stood up against injustice.  The teaching manual that goes with the kit gives many ideas of how to use these resources.

These and other teaching aids come in a colorful cloth satchel, which is hand woven and sewn by Mayan families in Guatemala, thus providing income for these people.

In 2010 Weech travelled to Africa, visiting Kenya, Burundi and the DRC.  She had a list of places and people she hoped to connect with, but little idea of how to find them.  “There are generally no phone numbers or addresses for these places.  The amazing thing is once you get there the doors just opened, as if I was being led to exactly where I was meant to be,” says Weech.  She doesn’t worry too much about logistics of travel and accommodation but instead trusts that things will show up, which they do.

“There have been a lot of guardian angels guiding me,” she says.  One of these angels is Mama Feza, who works with the Congolese Pygmy refugees in Burundi.

“The Pygmies have been recognized by international specialists as the world’s most marginalized indigenous people in this time.  Thirty three per cent of the Pygmy population of Rwanda was murdered in the genocide but we never hear about it.  They were chased out of the rainforest by rebel groups, after living there sustainably for thousands of years, and they are treated like non-people.  They are hungry, persecuted in school, and excluded from health care.  One Pygmy man was killed for sport while I was visiting.  Locals say that raping a Pygmy will cure your backache.”

And yet they have so much wisdom to offer, she says.  “They are known as one of the world’s most peaceful societies, resolving conflict mainly through humor and group consultation.  They know many of the natural medicines in the rainforest and have a profound love and respect for nature.  They are now living in desperate situations.”

Weech vividly remembers visiting a Pygmy refugee camp in Burundi after the Chief had invited her to lead the children through some art-making activities.  He had told her to expect 150 kids; she prepped for 450 but there were even more.  “They surrounded me so eagerly.  We had to snap all the crayons in three so everyone got one, and they were so excited!”

Weech asked the Pygmies what they most needed, and they answered food and education.  So she worked with them to establish a peace garden with nutritional and medicinal plants and trees, as well as a traditional beekeeping project.

The education component is also coming on-stream as Weech recently found a donor to fund a simple schoolhouse.

Weech also connected with the Masai people, another rich ancient culture facing extreme persecution.  Again, she learned that gardening could provide a key means of support, but it had to be adapted to the severe drought climate.  She responded by helping plant sack gardens at an orphanage and school, something she continues to support by spreading information and sending funds.

A sack garden costs next to nothing and can include up to 70 plants, not just helping feed a family but also bringing in some income.  “This is ideal for communities where there is not enough energy—even if there were enough water—for a full-scale garden.  I’m talking about communities devastated by drought, AIDS and famine, where many households are headed by grandmothers or children.”

Weech has also inspired others to take her ideas and materials on their travels.  Although she is undoubtedly the driving force behind the Children’s International Peace Project, her vision, and the way the project is growing, is very much decentralized.

“There are no passengers here on spaceship earth; we are all crew, to quote Buckminster Fuller,” she says with a laugh.   She feels she receives as much, or more, than she gives.

“These children as so amazing, so tuned into their intuition and spirit in ways that we have often forgotten.  Their strength and resilience is so incredibly inspiring.

“I remember Jorge, a street orphan in a Guatemalan village,” she continues.  “His grandma supports the family by making friendship bracelets.  He’s a growing boy, and he never really gets enough food.  One day I managed to give him a muffin.  I have never seen anyone bite into something with such urgency.  You could see he was ravenous.  We were walking along and there was a tiny toddler in the middle of the path with red hair, a sign of malnutrition.  Jorge’s face lit up and he kneeled down in front of the boy with his hands out and offered half the muffin.  The toddler took it, then Jorge wrapped his arms around him and said with great pride, ‘Linda, this is my cousin.’ What a teaching about generosity, connectedness and compassion!”

Another beautiful and moving moment came at a centre for homeless children in Guatemala.  “One evening, I told the kids there a bit about what was going on in the lives of children in the Congo.  The next morning I got up and went outside and all the orphans were there, singing and dancing for the children of Africa.”

Weech is currently home on her trio of Islands, putting together the final touches on the Eco-Peace Kits, sharing her photos and stories, and staying in touch with her increasingly large network of supporters and partners, open to whatever happens next as things unfold in wondrous ways.

She draws strength from the incredible beauty of the natural world around her and the amazing support of the many people who have contributed to her work.  “I want to express my profound gratitude for the love, encouragement and support from family, friends, students and colleagues,” she says.  “The reason I do this work is to bring realization of our oneness.  It’s all about loving and connecting to nature and honoring the connection between all of us.”

For more information, to get involved, or to book Linda to give an audio-visual presentation about her work, go to www.LindaWeech.com or email [email protected].

For more information about Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

• www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_57796.html
• http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011/democratic-republic-congo

For good sources of global humanitarian news:

• www.irinnews.org
• www.trust.org/alertnet/

For information on child soldiers in the DRC:

• www.child-soldier.org/child-soldiers-in-drc

For information about the Congolese Pygmies:

• www.trust.org/alertnet/news/drc-displacement-and-discrimination-150-the-lot-of-the-bambuti-pygmies

For the opportunity to sponsor a child in the DRC:

• www.child-sponsorship.com/

Nature heals.  Deep in our bones, we know that to be true.  But if you look at our incredibly sophisticated and complex health care system, you don’t see much nature.  Instead, there are pills, machines, chemistry, scalpels, white coats and a pressing need to scrub away all traces of dirt.

But there is a therapeutic field (no pun intended) that takes healing out of the clinics and hospitals and into the garden.  A field where the healing properties of dirt are embraced.  Known as Horticultural Therapy (HT), this little-known but widely-practiced treatment harnesses the power of the garden for healing.

HT is used around the world to help a huge range of people—veterans dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress-Disorder, physically and mentally challenged children and adults, survivors of sexual abuse, the terminally ill, and people with brain injuries.

Most gardeners will tell you that gardening is therapeutic—physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.  HT draws on this potential by having a trained Horticulture Therapist design and facilitate programs specifically around a client’s needs.  HT activities encompass everything to do with the garden, from sowing to weeding and watering to harvesting and using the harvest in many different ways, as well as the simple power of just enjoying a garden’s beauty.

“The plants are the catalyst by which healing happens,” says Courtenay resident Lisa Hamilton, a certified Horticultural Therapist.  Hamilton recently graduated with an HT diploma from Vancouver Island University (VIU), which runs the only HT program in Canada west of Ontario.

Hamilton has joined forces with Chanchal Cabrera, another Horticultural Therapist, Master Gardener, medical herbalist, and the founder of Gardens Without Borders (GWB), a new Comox Valley non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and providing Horticulture Therapy locally and, eventually, globally.

These two women are a perfect fit.  When Hamilton graduated last spring, she was faced with the challenging prospect of carving out a path as one of the first certified HTs in the Comox Valley.  Cabrera was just in the early stages of founding Gardens Without Borders and needed support.  It was a natural step for Hamilton to join GWB, helping with all aspects of founding and running a non-profit, as well as coming on board as a working Horticultural Therapist.

For Cabrera, GWB is in many ways an evolution of the work and training she has done over the past 20 years.

“I’ve been a medical herbalist all my working life,” says Cabrera.  With a Masters in Science in Herbal Medicine, she works as a clinician, treating patients much as a Naturopath does, and also an educator, teaching herbal medicine at institutions and to the general public.  She has also been an avid gardener her whole life and qualified as a Master Gardener in 1999.

Cabrera first encountered Horticultural Therapy while browsing at Vancouver’s Banyen Books.  Intrigued by the title, she picked up a book called The Healing Fields, by Sonja Linden and Jenny Grut.  This account of using HT to treat refugees and victims of torture moved her deeply.  “It was a real ‘aha’ moment,” she says.  “I’d been gardening and working as a healer for years, and never realized there was a discipline that put these two together.”

At that time the VIU program didn’t exist, but there was an excellent HT educational centre in the Cowichan Valley called Providence Farm.  Cabrera, originally from Scotland and living in Vancouver since 1988, enrolled in their linking program for students who already have a relevant professional background.  A one-month “extremely full-time” program qualified her as an HT.

When the idea for Gardens Without Borders first came to Cabrera, the focus was international, but as it turned out the first step involved putting down roots in local soil.

“I dreamed up Gardens Without Borders out of a sense of outrage, to be honest,” Cabrera explains.  “I was reading about what was going on in Palestine.  Here was a fourth generation born and raised and probably going to die in refugee camps.  Olive groves destroyed, farms destroyed, people’s capacity to grow food and medicine destroyed.  People’s roots literally torn up.  It made my blood boil.

“So my initial idea was to go to places where trauma has occurred and help set up gardens there to grow food and medicinal plants.  But it became apparent really quickly that there was a need right here, and I thought I should learn more before landing in a foreign country and just being a nuisance,” says Cabrera.

About five years ago Cabrera and her husband bought land in Royston and founded Innisfree Farms as a multi-purpose agricultural centre, growing and marketing produce and medicinal plants, running courses, hosting the Comox Valley Seed Savers, and providing a home base for Gardens Without Borders.

The garden at Innisfree is designed specifically for therapeutic purposes.  There are raised beds which are accessible to people with impaired mobility.  For people with vision limitations, there are many tactile and scented plants and a water feature so they can hear where they are to help stay oriented.  Also, the garden is contained, which provides a feeling of safety and also ensures that clients can’t wander off across the fields.

GWB started offering Horticulture Therapy at Innisfree about a year ago.  Programs are custom-designed.  Hamilton conducts a thorough initial consultation with clients and, if appropriate, their caregivers, assessing needs, limitations and goals.  She then designs activities for each session.

Hamilton says that HT involves less actual gardening than most people imagine.  Success is not measured in rows planted, weeded or harvested, but rather by improvements to the client’s well-being.

Clients range greatly in their abilities and needs and the HT’s job is to find a balance between what clients can do, what they want to do, and what will be most therapeutic.

“If we have someone with severe Down Syndrome, we need to figure out how they can benefit.  How do we know what’s good for them?  They may not have language skills but they do communicate.  We can tell they like having their hands in the dirt.”

“The program is very flexible and ultimately depends on the weather and how the client is doing on that day,” Hamilton says.  “It could just be walking in the garden.  It could be creating a tea-cup garden that they can take home or give to someone, or a craft such as making pressed flower cards.  It could be photographing the flowers, feeding the chickens, or walking the labyrinth.

On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where HT involves full-on gardening and farming activities.

Sessions at the farm include lunch, which the clients help prepare and serve.  This adds a social element and provides opportunities to learn cooperation, communication and planning.

Because GWB is a non-profit society, it keeps its fees very low—just $15 for a three-hour session including lunch.  Clients have a variety of funding sources and Hamilton is trained to make formal reports on the HT sessions for funding authorities when needed.  As well, GWB offers group programs, such as a recent afternoon session with women from the Comox Valley Transition Society.

There are countless ways that gardens can be therapeutic.  “Physical agility and dexterity happen.  People learn skills that could help them get a job, so there’s a vocational training element.  And there’s also a huge emotional and spiritual healing,” says Cabrera.

There’s plenty of research proving that access to nature is therapeutic.

“Just breathing dirt helps calm anxiety,” says Hamilton.  “There was actually a study done measuring this with children with ADD.”

“And there was an article in [British journal] The Lancet looking at what factors influence health in inner city populations,” says Cabrera.  “The single most important criterion was access to green space.  It trumped income and education.

“And here’s another interesting one: they compared two groups of people who’d just had gall bladder surgery.  One could see green space from their room, the other faced a brick wall.  The ones who could see nature had, overall, a quicker release, needed fewer pain medications, and had fewer complications.  Just from seeing nature!”

Science is just confirming what writers and artists have been telling us for centuries.  From Van Gogh’s radiant sunflowers to the children’s classic, The Secret Garden, where a broken family is healed through the magic of a garden, our culture has always reflected on nature’s healing powers.

In fact, Horticulture Therapy has been around in various forms since long ago; it just wasn’t given that name.  In Ancient Egypt, physicians prescribed “walks in the garden” to aid in the recovery of their patients.  In Europe and America, throughout the 1700s and 1800s, it was a common practice to have people with mental health challenges work at farms and gardens to treat their symptoms.  In the 20th Century, after WWI, therapy gardens were founded across the United States at veterans’ hospitals to help returning soldiers heal their physical and emotional wounds.

Today, you can find therapy gardens at prisons, psychiatric hospitals, schools, and residential care facilities.

It’s hard to pin down the exact moment HT was launched as a formal discipline.  Some would say it was in 1955, when Michigan State University created its first Masters of Science degree in HT.  In 1973, the American Horticulture Therapy Association was founded, and in 1987 its Canadian counterpart came into being.  HT is also widespread throughout Europe, especially Germany and England.

No one has an exact count of Horticultural Therapists, but the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association has 175 members.  The discipline has strong roots in BC, thanks largely to Providence Farm, which has been offering HT programs since 1979.  It was the founder of this program, Christine Pollard, who launched the VIU program Hamilton attended.

To become a certified HT, Hamilton attended the university full-time for two years, combining horticultural studies and education in community support work.  Training ranged from the technical, such as how to design and build gardens that are accessible for people with disabilities, to interpersonal, such as how to develop an effective therapeutic relationship.  Although she has many of the skills of a traditional therapist, Hamilton sees her role as more of a facilitator.  “I don’t try to steer the clients to any sort of rehabilitative solution; the clients themselves hold the key to their own healing.”  Ultimately, she says, it is the relationship with the plants that brings healing.

“Being with plants speaks to something non-verbal in us.  People who’ve been traumatized often find a very deep sense of peace from sitting in a garden, walking in the woods, or digging,” says Cabrera.

“And there are so many ways gardens provide metaphors for our lives.  Think about composting.  You discard all the bits you don’t want, that don’t work for you.  But then you have to turn it regularly, and although it’s stinky and ugly, you have to see it, work it, poke at it till it transforms into black gold.  Out of that, something nourishing and beautiful will grow.”

Although HT focuses on bringing healing to specific people, there is a wider relevance to the whole endeavour.  As our world becomes ever more mechanized and our reality ever more virtual, our need to reconnect with nature grows more and more urgent.  You could argue that human society itself needs some Horticultural Therapy.

In fact, Cabrera points out, Nature Deficit Disorder is increasingly recognized as a problem affecting our health as individuals and communities.  Richard Louv, who popularized this term in his book, Last Child in the Woods, links the lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to disturbing childhood trends, such as the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.  His book has helped galvanize a “no child left inside” movement aimed at getting kids back outside.

Louv emphasizes that Nature Deficit Disorder is not an individual affliction but rather a social disorder.  We can see society’s desire to reconnect with nature expressed in everything from the rising popularity of farmer’s markets to the hit film Avatar.

In a society afflicted by Nature Deficit Disorder, the garden increasingly seems like the perfect setting for healing.  Clearly, the time is right for Horticultural Therapy and for Gardens Without Borders.

“People are so hungry for a relationship with plants,” says Cabrera.

For more information about Gardens Without Borders visit: www.gardenswithoutborders.org

If her high school classmates could see her now, Carolyn West’s friends would not be surprised to learn that she has become an award-winning marketing expert and co-owner of an extremely successful bed and breakfast enterprise called Two Eagles Lodge. A gregarious and energetic high achiever from an early age, USA-born West went on to earn multiple awards including being named one of the Top 100 Women in the state of Maryland in 1996, and Maryland’s Women in Business Advocate of the Year in 2000 from the US Small Business Administration. She taught marketing at both Loyola College and John Hopkins University, in addition to hundreds of entrepreneurial workshops; and, at the age of 25, started her own marketing consulting company in 1990—which is still going strong today. And those are just a few of her remarkable achievements!

What her classmates and colleagues might be shocked to learn is that at the age of 35, just 12 years into her marriage to Jeff Price, Carolyn became a widow. The massive heart attack that took her 40-year-old husband’s life came without warning.

“I was happily married, enjoying my life and career and then, suddenly… a widow,” she recalls. “No-one I knew had lost a spouse so early in life.  To say it was life-changing would be an understatement, but that experience is part of what inspired me to follow my heart when I discovered Canada.”

People who knew Carolyn when she was growing up would also be shocked to learn that she is telling me this story from her new home in Union Bay, British Columbia, thousands of miles and another world away from her old Maryland stomping grounds.

Carolyn’s second husband, Steve Touhey, is a fun-living, down-to-earth kind of guy who is most comfortable working outside or kicking back to relax with friends and enjoy good music.  When they first met, he loved motorcycles, boating and target shooting, while Carolyn was an avid horsewoman and a scuba diver. Initially, they may have had different interests but they shared the same strong work ethic and innate desire to excel. While Carolyn is a ‘wizard of words’, Steve is a master craftsman of construction and a veritable ‘wizard of wood.’

How the couple came to be a married and move from the USA to Canada could form the basis for a romance novel. While I arrived at Two Eagles Lodge in Union Bay prepared to take notes for an InFocus Magazine profile of a successful business, I soon found myself listening to a love story—not just love between two people, but love for their new country and Island life as well.

Carolyn had known of Steve for many years—he was a college classmate’s brother.  Six months after Jeff’s passing, she needed an escort for a friend’s wedding.  She asked her friend, Laura Touhey, if her brother was still single and would he consider being her escort?

“The chance to go out with a pretty girl and have a meal and free beer!  I was up for it,” Steve declares, followed by a hearty laugh.

That first date blossomed into romance and, in 2001, Steve and Carolyn married.  Carolyn became instant stepmom to Steve’s then nine-year-old daughter, Mary, and they began their lives together. Carolyn continued to run her home-based Maryland company, Impact Marketing, and Steve managed his construction company, which he had started in 1990.

Knowing full well that life is precious—and sometimes all too short—the Touheys talked endlessly about their dreams for the future.  The most frequent conversations focused on moving somewhere where the pace of life was slower.

“I watched people all around me continue to brag about 80-hour work weeks,” explains Carolyn.  “And I had spent years listening to my father say, ‘When I retire I will…’ and I listened to my mother, who was a diabetic, say, ‘When I feel better I will…’  My mom died in 1997.  She and dad were never able to do the things they dreamed of together.  And then there were all the plans that Jeff and I had made that never had a chance to happen.”

Together, the Touheys decided they wanted to live near water and mountains and they were seriously considering relocating to Arkansas or Montana, based on research they did on the website www.FindYourSpot.com. But their focus unexpectedly turned to Canada when Carolyn was invited to speak at a June 2004 conference in Vancouver and someone suggested she and Steve visit the Island.

“Honestly, I had to ask, ‘What island?’” recalls Carolyn.  “We weren’t that familiar with what Canada had to offer but we took our friend’s advice and boarded the ferry to Nanaimo.  As the ferry docked in the harbor Steve and I looked at each other with wide grins on our faces.  Now this was paradise!  We travelled around Vancouver Island to Tofino, Gold River and all the towns along the way and we fell in love with what we saw.  As an added incentive, the dollar was strong and it was easy for Americans to buy land in Canada, so we embarked on a mission to move here.”

Feeling “called to the Island”, the Touheys returned to Vancouver Island for another visit just two months later. After that trip, they did a lot of research and returned for a third visit in October 2004, when they embarked on a whirlwind tour of properties.  They considered more than 70 real estate listings in the Comox Valley area.

After four days of searching, they decided on a 12-acre parcel of heavily treed land overlooking the ocean in Union Bay. To add another romantic twist to their love story, they signed the offer to purchase the property on their third wedding anniversary.

The Touhey’s returned to the US to work on the immigration process and create conceptual designs for their new home, leaving a contractor with instructions to clear the land for development. During her research on immigration, Carolyn discovered a provincial program that encouraged entrepreneurs and new business start-ups.  It required jumping through a few hoops so they came up with a plan to add an extra wing to the home they would build, and turn it into a bed and breakfast.

With all of the immigration paperwork in order and construction on the house already underway, in March 2006, the Touheys packed up their Maryland home, loaded their five horses into a trailer, and made the pilgrimage to Canada.  In the middle of all the packing and preparation, Carolyn’s 84-year-old father passed away, so they also had to pack up the family home she had grown up in and prepare both houses for sale.

Once they arrived in Union Bay, the Touheys lived in a motor home for the first few months.  Carolyn continued to work for her clients via the internet.  Steve oversaw the construction of their new 3,000-square foot home while he personally built the barn, run-in shelters for the horses, all of the outbuildings and fencing, as well as all of the landscaping.

The home designed by this dynamic duo boasts a massive stone-clad centre peak flanked by two dormer windows, a sharp contrast against a backdrop of towering cedar trees.  A wide expanse of glass across the front of the home invites visitors to enjoy the panoramic view of Baynes Sound, Denman Island and the coastal mountains.  Their horses, quietly grazing in an adjacent field, add even more charm to the home’s rural ambiance.

As an added touch of romance, the large storm-water collection pond located on the property is shaped like a heart. (A surprise design, courtesy of their excavation contractor.)  A lovely handcrafted cedar chair, made locally by Bloomfield Flats, sits adjacent to the pond, inviting visitors to wander over with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine to sit and enjoy the ocean view.

In July 2006, the Touheys were finally able to move from the RV into their new home.  Two months later, Steve broke ground, laid the foundation and began construction of an adjoining wing for the B&B accommodations.  “We settled on the name ‘Two Eagles Lodge’ for our B&B because eagles mate for life and build a sturdy nest,” explains Carolyn.  “We wanted to incorporate the strength and majesty of the bald eagle in our branding.”

The B&B wing Steve built features two large main floor rooms and a luxurious 950-square-foot suite on the second storey. All rooms feature private baths, separate entrances and ocean view.  The interior décor showcases the work of Island artisans and the songs of local musicians can be enjoyed in the private rooms or the common area.  Not surprisingly, art and sculptures featuring two eagles are a common theme.

“Every piece of trim, square foot of flooring and coat of paint was done by Steve, and he did it so beautifully, especially considering that we were under tremendous immigration deadlines to have our first guests within eight months of breaking ground!” says Carolyn.

After months of hard work, everything was completed and Two Eagles Lodge welcomed its first guests in May 2007. Since then, they have been a ‘home away from home’ for hundreds of visitors from around the world and they have earned a reputation as true ambassadors for the Valley.

Carolyn says most guests are “just friends we didn’t have a week earlier,” and they “come in with a handshake and leave with a hug.”  A stay at Two Eagles usually includes evening chats around the fire with roasted marshmallows, wine and chocolate.  They even cook crabs ‘Maryland style’ for guests—living up to their marketing that says they are not a typical B&B.

Although not part of the original plan, Two Eagles Lodge eventually started hosting community fundraisers and became a venue for various group meetings, workshops, and even holiday parties for businesses and local groups.  They are now annual sponsors of the Vancouver Island Music Business Conference.  Ever generous community supporters, the Touheys have also donated more than 100 gift certificates for one- or two-night stays and breakfasts to more than 50 organizations.

After only four years of operation, a quick peek at the guest page on their website or a review of TripAdvisor.com shows that the couple’s commitment to making people feel at home is much appreciated.  Their genuine desire to please and knack for hospitality has not gone unnoticed.  Last year, Two Eagles Lodge was presented with the Vancouver Island Better Business Bureau’s 2010 Torch Award for Hospitality (they are finalists for the 2011 award as well).  And, in January 2011, they were named the 2011 Tourism/Hospitality Business of the Year as recipients of a Vancouver Island Business Excellence Award.

“We are so honored to win these prestigious island-wide awards. To have them in a place of honor on our mantle leaves us a bit speechless when you think about how many tourism businesses are on the Island, including businesses much, much bigger than ours,” says Carolyn.  “We are so pleased to be ambassadors for Vancouver Island in general, and for the Comox Valley in particular.  We are happy that guests recognize our efforts and our sincere desire to turn their vacations into incredible memories, living true to our motto—where new friends and great memories are made in paradise.”

With the B&B in full operation and the confidence that their decision to immigrate to Canada had been a good one, in 2008, Carolyn transitioned ownership of her 18-year-old US marketing business to a former student of hers and launched SmartBiz Strategy in the Comox Valley.

In typical style, she hit the ground running.  She was acknowledged for her marketing savvy with another award. SmartBiz was named the Comox Valley Home-Based Business Association’s 2010 Business of the Year.  Most recently, in March 2011, Carolyn received Honorable Mention in the Enterprising Women Magazine’s “Women of the Year” awards—she was one of only a handful of women from around the world to be recognized.

While it may sound like life is all work and no play for the Touheys, that is not the case.  What once may have been separate interests are now shared passions.  The couple spends time with their horses and scuba dive together, they enjoy skiing at Mount Washington and they learned to kayak and enjoy the island’s great hiking. As they explore Vancouver Island together they make mental notes about great places for day trips and picnics, and they make a point of getting to know local shopkeepers and businesses so that they can provide guests with first-hand knowledge of things to see and do around the island.

This summer, the Touheys should be eligible to become Canadian citizens and they will attend the citizenship ceremonies with glowing hearts and wide grins.  We still love America,” Carolyn says, “but our home is here, and our heart is here.  Why wouldn’t we be citizens?”   Without a doubt, these ‘Two Eagles’ have built a sturdy nest and they are here to stay.