Reinventing life through edutheraplay : developing therapeutic spaces through education for abused children in a Latin American Christian children's home

Abstract

Can you imagine wrapping yourself in old newspapers to keep warm at night, with no home or family to protect you? Can you imagine never being given the opportunity to attend school because you cannot afford books or paper? Can you imagine having no one to turn to in times of trouble? Can you imagine having no honesty, or trust in your life? According to the UN, there are 150 million homeless street children in the world, 40 percent in Latin America alone. In September of 1997, Steve and Pam English established The World Our Parish and La Senda (The Way) Children's Home to serve the needs of the homeless and abused children of Guatemala. When the new facility opened in May of 2001, the co-directors of La Senda created a safe-haven and place for growth and maturity for children who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned by their families and the Guatemalan society as a whole. The need of this facility was to develop a landscape that exhibited the care and love that children receive in this family oriented environment. Through the educational needs of the children of the home the facility needed to be a therapeutic space that created the much-needed feelings of comfort, compassion, and caring.The field of therapeutic design is both an ancient and modem practice, which has only recently delved into the potential of therapeutic landscapes for children. The field of specialized landscapes designed for children has been evolving for more than fifty years, which has contributed heavily to advancing the healing role of children's gardens (Cooper-Marcus 324). Specifically, the field of education as the basis for therapeutic design for children has been explored in only limited manor to this point and thus is an ever expanding and developing design specialty. This study merged the fields of therapeutic and educational landscape architecture through the latest trends in children's landscape design. These design trends will be directly applied to the La Senda site in Sumpango, Guatemala to create a multi-functional, and increasingly beneficial socio-developmental environment for the children who need it most. To better understand the emerging trends in the interconnected fields of therapeutic and educational design from a variety of scales and historical time periods four case studies were chosen. Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York, New York (1951); Therapeutic Garden at the Institute for Child and Adolescent Development, Wellesley, Massachusetts (1996); Meadowbrook Pond Seattle, Washington (1996); Notting Hill Adventure Playground, London (1965); all show revolutionary and undoubtedly timeless theoretical principles that were applied to the design of the edutheraplay environment for La Senda that metamorphosed the existing semi-natural, amenity-lacking site into a living, changing, natural, educational, developmental, and therapeutic space.