Ginhawa Retreat for Mindanaon Defenders

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Last February 2025, we facilitated a 2-day Ginhawa (Wellbeing) retreat for Mindanao defenders in Samal Island. This was a gathering of human rights, women's rights, indigenous peoples rights, and labor rights youth defenders. We were joined by an Egyptian human rights lawyer and advocate, as well as a Nepalese-American human rights advocate. Wonderful goody bags with the Lambing camps were also prepared by Mako Micro Press.

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For this Ginhawa Retreat, the organization requested for a mixture of rest and recreation as well as peer-to-peer capacity-building. Thank you to the organizing defenders and the participants for entrusting us and wanting to share space, most of all, for their valuing of their own wellbeing.

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We curated a Ginhawa Retreat journey that wove the following experiences, centering on trauma-informed care, collective resilience strategies against political repression, holistic security and Sikolohiyang Pilipino.

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1. Learned how to give social-justice informed psychosocial support, where we integrated Psychological First Aid (Tanaw-Minaw-Sumpay) with Sikolohiyang Pilipino's Pagdadala approach

2. Danced Budots (of course, matik'), learned Egyptian belly dancing, practiced grounding skills through body movements

3. Had one-one-one grieving or care sessions‍

4. Swam at the beach/pool, laughed, bonded, ate, rested

5. Made a Pagdadala Story zine, where we explored activist journeys through the emotional and metaphorical language of burden-bearing and story-telling.

6. Learned how oppression and political repression hurts or overwhelms the senses, emotions, the body

7. Learned Holistic Security, including security planning and risk assessments

8. Practiced how to give psychosocial support to others, such as communities impacted by sociopolitical violence. During this part, we had memorable conversation about the ethics of giving care to Marcos, or other perpetrators, and the challenge of balancing a psychosocial orientation with an activist orientation when providing support to communities

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