Bringing Our Work Home
Asylum seekers in NYC are not only contending with the city’s limited resources to effectively house and service them, as well as the legal challenges of the asylum seeking process, they also lack resources to deal with the mental health toll incurred by experiences of conflict, trauma, and displacement.
In July 2024, The Campfire Project launched an initial pilot bringing together dozens of asylum seekers who all crossed the Darien Gap in the last year. Participants engaged in 8 days of arts-based wellness programming culminating in a performance showcasing these artists’ own creative writing, stilt walking, song, and dance.
Building from the success of this pilot, in fall of 2024, Campfire launched a series of support groups, providing spaces for asylum seekers in NYC to come together. These ongoing, intimate, and participatory groups, provide the frameworks needed to cultivate the deep connections, trust, support and community-building to combat the isolation and loneliness of the refugee experience, as well as space to address the trauma of displacement.
Local Initiatives
Cultivating connection, creativity, and community among asylum seekers in New York City
Men's Support Group
This group engages young adult asylum seekers, ages 18-28, from Guinea, housed in shelters across the city. Facilitated by a team of artists, arts therapists, and mental health professionals, the workshop utilizes creative expression as a means for participants to build connection, agency, and camaraderie. Programming includes stilt-walking, movement, music, writing, and filmmaking, and is supplemented with one-on-one mental health support and ESL programming.
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Women's Support Group
This group meets at Riverside Terrace Shelter, a DHS shelter in NYC, servicing female asylum seekers, ages 18+, within their residence (critical for these women as many are young mothers). The group offers female residents a space for sharing and processing emotions and experiences, facilitated through therapeutic movement and music practices. The group is led by the head of NYU’s Drama Therapy Program, Dr. Nisha Sajnani, and Dr. Cathy Raduns, a psychiatrist highly experienced in working with displaced persons and trauma.