Feelings Matter Understanding Emotions for change

A place where you can open your heart and share your feelings

Everyone’s life is a unique experience, but we all share commonalities, of these shared human life experiences – some are happy but some are harder to understand. The COVID-19 pandemic has been having a devastating impact across the world. Efforts to contain the coronavirus are vital to the health of the world’s population, but they are also exposing children and women to increased risks of violence, including maltreatment, gender-based violence and sexual abuse.

Recent reports from countries having been in COVID-19 emergency show that restrictions in movement, social isolation and similar containment measures coupled with existing or increased social and economic pressures on families are leading to an increase in violence, particularly against women and children. In many countries around the globe, domestic violence has increased from 30% to 300%.

In Viet Nam, 21 million children were at home as schools were closed during social distancing. This new reality had direct implications on child care patterns, protection and safety.

The surge of statistics like these is a direct acceleration from the situations the pandemic has put individuals and families in. The virus itself hasn’t made people abusive, but the daily situation and adversity for humanity has exponentially increased stress and pressure on a daily basis, it has pushed our human capacity to thrive down to basic survival.

How can someone do their best to be a compassionate parent when they are kept awake at night with anxiety about paying the bills?

How can we create safer societies for all?

What situations might expose us to more adversity than usual?

How can a child develop confidence and flourish when they cannot socialise and spent over 10 hours a day online?

How can we prevent the most vulnerable from taking risks in everyday life?

One thing for sure that we should all be aware of and stand up for that:

Every child and every woman must be protected from all forms of violence

Be that hidden behind closed doors or in the community, at school or online – in whichever context we live in.

Before we can truly understand an issue, we should try to understand the impact  within our own community. These issues are preventable and should be supported by society as a whole. One way to understand is to know how many people these behaviours affect.

This exhibition hopes to help us better understand ourselves and find out more about what is happening within our community.