Thailand's tsunami children are being helped to overcome their problems through 'phototherapy'

MAIN PHOTO AND RIGHT z Aekapong Navarak, 13, took a picture of his friend sitting in the shade of a big tree stump on Laem Pakarang beach. z Nuchara Navarak, a 13-year-old from the Moken village of Ban Thung Wa, snaps a shot of her friends near a coconut tree decorated with mock-up direction signs put up by foreign tsunami volunteers at Laem Pakarang beach.

THROUGH YOUNG

EYES

Thailand's tsunami children are being helped to overcome their problems through 'phototherapy'

Story by KULTIDA SAMABUDDHI

Thailand's tsunami children were the subjects of photographers from around the world who covered the Dec 26, 2004 disaster here _ and many have now become photographers themselves. The inspiration came from a series of photography workshops for kids held by a group of Thai and foreign photojournalists. The photos published on this page were taken by youngsters affected by the Boxing Day tsunami, including children of Burmese migrant workers and ethnic Moken, in Phangnga's Takua Pa district.

These youngsters have suffered many hardships and several projects have been set up to help them recover from the pain and suffering they had to go through.

Believing in the healing power of the arts, some photojournalists who covered the 2004 Asian tsunami launched a photo training project they called InSIGHT Out! to teach the kids how to take photos and write stories about their own lives and communities.

The people behind the project hope that giving kids a chance to explore and tell their own stories about their post-tsunami lives through the lens will open a window of creativity and strengthen their self-respect, thus helping them to recover from the pain caused by the tsunami. This, they said, is called ''photography therapy''.

Sponsored by Unicef, the Grassroots Human Rights Education and Development Committee and the Duang Prateep Foundation, almost 300 children have joined the workshop since 2006. Thousands of tsunami pictures taken by professional photographers have been published over the past few years. These pictures however, show the stories of some of Thailand's ''tsunami children'' through their own eyes.