Carol recruits...

Have a Heart, support programs that support your heart for Valentine’s Day

carol — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:51:39 +0000

February is the month to take care of your heart and the heart of your loved ones. What can you do to education, advocate, volunteer for or give to support an agency in your area that support heart health awareness or treatment? Let me know what you did: whether you give funds to help a program, distribute information, volunteer your time with heart patients, or advocate for the cause.

52 Weeks of Giving – who’s with me? (carolrecruits.wordpress.com)

Ginter Park Gives Back start-up

carol — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:26 +0000

I’m trying to get my Ginter Park Gives Back philanthropy group going again. I tend to get email interest but rounding up presence at planing meetings is so much harder. I did talk some with interested parties about making our work as non-partisan and non-political but rather focused on helping the non-profits that serve our community through fundraising. So I’m hoping this takes off. So join me peeps! Join me at Stir Crazy at 10:00 am on Saturday, the 11th.

52 Weeks of Giving – who’s with me?

carol — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:00:22 +0000

I heard a great idea today while at Knit Church from the ever wonderful Cate Fitt. She is part of a 52 Weeks of Giving group, where they rotate giving to different organizations weekly. I would love to start this. Who can I recruit to giving something every week? I can put organizations in rotation or types of organizations. Then have people post in the comments what organizations they gave to. So I will twitter and facebook away and see who signs up.

In this first post, I hope people sign up in the comments. Then under the category : 52 Weeks of Giving, I will upload a new post weekly rotating a type of non-profit (such as literacy, domestic violence, food bank, etc) and then followers can donate to what fits that category in their location.

So come on folks, who’s with me!!!!

Ginter Park Gives Back

carol — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 18:54:07 +0000

Ginter Park residents joined me in 2011 to create a neighborhood philanthropy group to support local non-profits and community initiatives. Our projects resulted in different types of activities, fundraisers, and giving initiatives to support local and statewide efforts to end violence, support mental health efforts, encourage literacy, create safe neighborhoods, and other efforts to serve our community.

Historic Ginter Park is one of the oldest planned neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia. The residents of Ginter Park have a long history of community involvement. Contact us to get involved at the giving level.

Email Carol at olson.carolann@gmail.com We are planning meetings for Saturdays at 10:00 am at Stir Crazy located on MacArther.

Knitting for Peace

carol — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:20:35 +0000

Most of the knitters I know seem to be interested in social justice issues, human and animal rights, and community change. I also know quite a few knitters who are therapists. So armed with that realization, and that all knitters have an enormous stash of left over yarn in their house, I decided to recruit knitters into making projects for community groups with left over yarn. I started with Hearts for Healing, a project to make small hearts for victims of sexually based crimes. Other projects to be developed!

Hearts for Healing

carol — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:15:06 +0000

I’m recruiting knitters to knit heart pillows or sachets to be included in our rape recovery kits. We take these kits out to the hospital for survivors of sexually violent crimes seeking medical care and forensic examination. If you are a knitter and interested in making small hearts or heart pillows please send to:

The Rappahannock Council Against Sexual Assault, 2601 Princess Anne Street, Suite 102, Fredericksburg, VA 22401. www.rcasa.org 540-371-5581 info 540-371-1666 24-hour hotline info@rcasa.org www.rcasa.wordpress.com

With your permission, we will list you on our website! email outreach@rcasa.org for patterns if you need one.

Knitters - Hearts for Healing:

Anonymous knitter
Cate Fitt - Virginia
Myra Levick – Florida
Carol Olson – Virginia

Art Therapists as Social Activists

carol — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:00:53 +0000

I have blogged before on the many uses of art in response to violence and the concept of the Art Therapist as Social Activist. Art Therapists have been working as social advocates and activists for over 20 years and have had an influence on both the art therapy world and social issues.

Maxine Junge talks about the orientation of psychotherapists as sitting in their offices waiting for the client to come to them and working only with the individual in the cocoon of the office space and artists as being the force of social change by identifying the inner beat of the citizen in relation to society. It makes sense that the role of the art therapist as being from both worlds would take a more activist role in society, using their more developed sense of the pulse of the world and the ability to envision change that would involve the individual and the group and be “a pioneering individualist”

Here is how I use art across three realms: therapeutic response, social advocacy, and vicarious trauma.

Art Therapy as a Counseling Modality for victims of trauma. I currently provide art therapy in the intervention program to work with survivors of violence in the immediate aftermath of violence as well as for survivors seeking counseling many years after the event.
Art Advocacy: At my current place, RCASA, and previosly at RBHA, I have worked survivors to create and utilize the creative voice recaptured within therapy sessions to become advocates, using art to raise awareness and reduce stigma of sexually violent crimes through a creative writing and art group and incorporating into the Action Alliance’s “Art of Surviving Sexual Assault” This awareness campaign as well as RCASA’s use of creative writing and art groups for graduates of our counseling program is designed to work with survivors to access the power of visual media to diffuse violence and increase awareness of the impact of violence on our society as a constructive social action.
Art to Combat Vicarious Trauma: Internally to the agency, another type of trauma can be a factor in response to survivors and that is the providers themselves. Here, the staff participates in creative art making sessions with the goal of metaphoric intervention within the staff group experience. These sessions allows rape crisis providers of all types in the agency to maintain their bond in serving victims of violence, process their own experiences in dealing with victims, families, perpetrators, the legal system, and the community in general in a creative manner that combines working through metaphor, sharing space in a healing manner and sharing words of support and empowerment.

The Art of Surviving Sexual Assault

carol — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:52:55 +0000

This program was started by the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance. The Art of Surviving is a project bridging the perspectives and work of survivors of sexual violence, educators, activists, and scholars through the lens of a dynamic exhibit of artwork and poetry created by survivors of sexual violence across Virginia. You can find more information at The Art of Surviving Website.

As a Governing Body Member of the Action Alliance and Director of a local rape crisis center (RCASA) I work to bring the show to Fredericksburg area annually. I also collaborated with the YWCA,the Virginia Art Therapy Association, and Gallery 5 to bring the show to Richmond. I recruited art therapists from VATA to participate in the show twice to interact and talk about the use of art therapy as an effective therapeutic tool for healing.

art to change lives

carol — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:17:48 +0000

Artists have a long history of creating art to record history, to give voice to the masses, to create social change. Art is also used to give voice to man’s inhumanity to man, to an individual’s inner state, and to the healing process from the traumas we inherent.

As an artist and activist I have always tried to blend these two into projects to help change lives, change communities, and give impact to our society.

Virginia Art Therapy Association

carol — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:52:44 +0000

I moved back to Virginia in the summer of 1999 and realized the Virginia Art Therapy Association was defunct. Once I joined a private practice, I started finding out who the art therapists were in the town. I started inviting them to monthly art making sessions to join us. Pam Hill and Peggy Healy started with me, then Laura Lee and Jonathan started coming. We met casually at first, just making art and talking about art therapy. Eventually Sarah Thacker, Sarah Larsen, Spencer Powers, Gretchen Graves, and Lesly Shephardson (now Love) joined and by 2004 we started the paper work to officially begin The Central Virginia Art Therapy Association and became official in 2006. We changed it to just the Virginia Art Therapy Association realizing we needed to cover the entire state to have more credence if we moved toward title protection. Sarah T., Sarah L. Gretchen, Lesly and I were the first officers being housed at the Resource Guidance Services and then at The Creative Art Space that Sarah, Sarah, and I started.

There are new officers now: Mariko Saito, Erin Kemp, Lelsy Love and Gretchen Graves. Plus Danica Henrich.

Nice to see my baby grow!