“I was able to dance today, and it helped me with my stress,” an 11-year-old girl told Sarita Fritzler, an emergency team leader for Save the Children, which is providing flood assistance in Louisiana.
The child and her family were among more than 5,000 people who turned to emergency shelters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after flooding damaged or destroyed more than 60,000 homes in the state in mid-August.
The family found shelter at Baton Rouge River Center, which on Tuesday still held more than 800 people, including 147 children and 46 teens — and was in its third week of use as a shelter.
The massive complex has cots set up side by side.
“These children are clearly affected by the disaster,” Fritzler said.
Save the Children set up child-friendly spaces in the shelter where children can create arts and crafts, dance, play, make puppets and do other activities, Fritzler said. These kinds of spaces provide psychosocial support to children in emergencies.
[For more of this story, written by Stell Simonton, go to http://youthtoday.org/2016/08/...-help-children-cope/]
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