The Art Over Hate Collective’s Healing Arts Kits began as a direct result of the tragedy of September 11th and one man’s idea. “Jef Campion, aka “an army of one,” an artist, a Yonkers, New York fireman, and a first responder, was providing life-saving support to individuals injured in the attack when he saw a child who was clearly traumatized,” said Art Over Hate Collective CEO Craig Dershowitz. “He badly wanted to help the child but the rules of triage forced him to assist those with physical injuries first.

Jef always remembered that child and made it his mission to find ways to mitigate the effects of PTSD in children in crisis. He brought that idea to the Art Over Hate Collective, who shared it with our team of mental health professionals and over time, study, and on-the-ground practice, it turned into a PTSD preventative program now known as the Healing Arts Kits. The Healing Arts Kits began with Jef Campion’s idea in 2012 and has grown with the support, endorsement and work of various mental health professionals and premier partners over the last 15 years to the point of being one of, if not the only, prevention-based modality currently available.”

“All PTSD programs that I am familiar with deal with treatment and management of the effects of PTSD once the trauma has been set in the child’s subconscious. However, there are opportunities before that happens to interrupt the processing of emotions and memory to prevent the crises from becoming a long-term, emotionally resonant effect on the individual’s psychological makeup,” explained Dershowitz. “The specific timing of delivery of the Kits, the products inside them and their usage are all built to do just that – interrupt the crystallization of memory that turns a traumatic event into a lifetime of PTSD related suffering.

Specifically, PTSD forms in the first half hour, three hours, and during sleep, which is when children process emotional and mental stimuli in their memory and their brain determines which memories to keep and how to categorize them in the brain and emotions. The Healing Arts Kits are intended to be delivered within that first 30-minute window so that they have the most opportunity to break any continuity of memory.”

The Healing Arts Kits serve to interrupt the cycle of thought that turns a traumatic event into a long-term, crystallized memory. Each element serves to stimulate a child’s unique self-healing mechanisms, provide a positive distraction from the further traumatizing elements occurring in the moment, interrupt the process of memory consolidation, and empower caregivers for immediate intervention and interaction.

And also SUPER IMPORTANT says Dershowitz, “The Healing Arts Kits come with a proprietary activity book created by our team of psychiatrists and therapists that activate the items within the Kits. Each item was not only selected by a consortium of mental health professionals, parents, teachers and first-responders but they are specifically designed for maximum impact when used with the exercises within our workbook.”

Art Over Hate Healing Arts Kits are emergency psychological first aid kits, used with children living through violence, war, terrorism, and other crises.”The Kits have been reviewed, endorsed and used by multiple organizations, including, among others, by Save A Child’s Heart, the Israel Ministry of Education, the Herzog Center for the Treatment of Psychodrama, the Israel Trauma Coalition, Shaare Zedek Hospital, the Municipality of Sderot, the Duet Center and the Community Stress Prevention Center,” said Craig.

Craig shared with Israel Seen some touching moments that he experienced seeing the Healing Arts Kits being used. “The real beauty,” he said, “is that I don’t get to see the Kits in use most of the time because the Healing Arts Kits are utilized immediately during crisis situations and are being implemented before anyone but the most immediate first responders are on the scene. What I can share that most touches me is when I saw an image from the front lines of Poland, where Ukrainian refugees were escaping the original Russian attacks at the beginning of the war. There, in the photo, were Healing Arts Kits! Without me even knowing, the Israeli government had brought them to a war zone to help those innocent children in the middle of one of the worst humanitarian crises ever.”

“I can also share how proud I am of the ways that other organizations have found to implement the Kits beyond and above their original intended use. For instance, a youth village in Dolev had requested them for use during rocket attacks, but instead decided to try them as a way of helping their children reintegrate back into the school after they would go to broken homes for the weekend and experience difficult circumstances. The Healing Arts Kits for them took on a whole new dimension as a healing tool outside of our expectations and we were very excited to see this evolution support more Israeli children in need.”

The Art Over Hate Collective would love donations so that they can produce the Healing Arts Kits. “The more we can produce at once, the smaller the cost to produce”, said Craig Dershowitz. Please visit https://www.healingartskits.org/

For more information: Contact Craig Dershowitz:

Craig@healingartskits.org718-757-8738