Successful Interventions

Sohini first used her curriculum successfully with the survivors of trafficking at the Sanlaap care home. Her twelve years of intensive work using DMT has enabled seven survivors to emerge as leaders and trainers of DMT. These young women and men are working with different organizations,which has emerged as a very effective livelihood option for them. They can conduct workshops, create choreography and conduct sessions independently. Five of them along with Sohini formed an organization, called Kolkata Sanved, to promote dance movement as a therapy and alternative tool for psychosocial rehabilitation.

• Through our Training of the Trainer (TOT) program, 10 young women are training to implement DMT, three of whom will be joining Kolkata Sanved as assistants.
• Kolkata Sanved has developed seven community leaders from Bangladesh (ACD Bangladesh). These leaders in turn, are now training the people in the community where the organization works.
• Twenty social workers, survivors, psychologists and counselors from Nepal have also undergone the DMT process, seven of whom are implementing DMT on a regular basis.
• Recently, Patha Bhavan, one of the most renowned schools in Kolkata has incorporated Sampoornata as part of their academic curriculum.
• The Department of Social Welfare, Government of West Bengal has recently granted us the permission to implement DMT in government shelter homes.
• We have been invited to work with outreach workers to develop their communication skills and also capacity building through our process.

Our Stories

Mitali is a 29 year old woman from the Ramechap district of Nepal and a victim of domestic violence. She was rescued by police and brought to the Saathi shelter in Nepal. Diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia she started taking medication. While taking medicine she spent most of her time either sleeping or sitting without doing anything. She even refused to talk to others.

When she attended dance therapy curriculum under Sohini, a visible change in her manner and attitude started coming through. She now shows a more positive and responsive attitude towards herself and others. "I enjoy dance. I gain sense of freedom through dance. I love how I can express the unspoken through movement."

Monika (name changed) is a 15 year old victim of trafficking staying at the All Bengal Women’s Union Shelter Home for the past 5 years. When we started our DMT class, we found that she was doing nothing in the shelter home and suffered from depression, often sitting alone and disturbing other girls in the home.

We took her in our DMT class. Initially she only disturbed the other participants, but gradually through the process she started to progress. It took two months to bring her into the process. The problems were as follows: no concentration and coordination, negative feelings, low self esteem, trauma, anger, violent behavior (self destructive). She started to come regularly to our classes. The first indicator was that she came to class on time and took the responsibility to call others for this class.

Finally she was very keen on joining TOT (our Training of the Trainers programme). Since last December she has been joining our TOT classes and also other regular classes for training. A girl who was suffering from depression and feeling as if she had no purpose in life is now dreaming to become a DMT trainer and to use this future career option to bring changes in other people's lives.

Seeing these remarkable changes, representatives of All Bengal Women's Union reported at our Roundtable Conference that DMT is working wonders for the children and they would like to incorporate this process for all the Shelter Home children.