Several years ago, a gentleman attending a Memory Book presentation at a community service club in Oregon asked me, “What good is a Memory Book to an orphan? Surely they have other needs far more important.” “Good question,” I responded. Silently, I recalled sitting with a child in Africa, turning the pages of their own Memory Book as they shared their photos, drawings and handwritten stories. In joy mingled with tears, I framed my answer to the man’s question. “Everybody wants and needs to discover that they are somebody.“
So, how could I convince skeptics, the intellects, the medically trained people, that something so simple as a platform for telling one’s story in a Memory Book can promote healing and growth in the presence of traumatic events? And then I had the opportunity to travel overseas with a group of nursing students and non-profit Apple of His Eye Charity volunteers to continue to train and distribute Memory Books around the globe. During that trip, Dr. Kaye Anderson, Associate Professor at the School of Nursing, University of Portland, asked me, “Have you wondered about the outcome of a child using a Memory Book?” Her question and expertise in research began a journey to discover the long term impact of an orphaned or vulnerable child using a Memory Book.
Summer 2014. The first research paper, Evaluation of a Memory Book Intervention with Orphaned Children in South Africa, co-authored by Dr. Kaye Anderson, Dr. Barb Braband and myself (Tamara Faris) was published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing. The research, including individual interviews with recipients of Memory Books, beginning in 2010 in South African children’s villages, suggests that orphaned and vulnerable children highly valued a Memory Book as a means to preserve their stories of identity, relationships, coping and hope.
Summer 2018. Our second research paper, Building Resiliency in Orphaned and Vulnerable Children through the Memory Book Intervention, was accepted and published in the Journal of Christian Nursing (July/September 2018). This qualitative phenomenological approach explored and compared the lived experiences of orphaned children, adolescents, and caregivers who had used the Memory Book intervention at six children’s homes in India, Kenya, and South Africa. The study found similar themes between countries about identity, relationships, emotions, coping and hope—all suggesting that the Memory Book intervention encourages the preservation of a child’s story, aids in grief recovery, and can be used for any child facing recovery from difficult life events.
The researchers/authors would like to express gratitude to the University of Portland for internal institutional funding and support. We also thank the children and caregiver participants at the children’s homes in South Africa, Kenya and India who shared their stories. We wish them continued healing in their life journeys.
READ MORE IN OUR FALL 2018 NEWSLETTER.
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