Clay, Water, and Hands

We visited an organization in Giraltovce, Slovakia. The staff cares for 121 disabled children and adults who cannot care for themselves.

The clients are people with physical and mental disabilities or serious behavioral disorders or a combination thereof. the organization provides 24 hour accommodations, meals, nursing, rehabilitation, recreation, and educational activities for clients.

The ceramic workshop involves preparing and sharing raw clay using the pottery wheel, then baking and painting the clay created items.

Working with clay allows clients with mental challenges to overcome fears and anxiety and gain self-confidence. It is also a place to work cognitive and creative abilities, fine motor skills and dexterity also improve when involved with hands on projects like clay ceramics. These are monumental tasks for many of the clients but help improve life skills.

Their hope is to encourage clients to work together by taking steps to accomplish multiple tasks, creating a finished clay artwork requires several steps to follow over a period of time with planning and follow through to complete.

Clients will be taught by a certified instructor on how to work with ceramics. The organization promised they would locate and provide an instructor to assist teaching the clients in working with clay. Items produced from this pottery workshop will be presented for cultural and social events in other cities and regions, and for Christmas and Easter events. These will also be viewed by the public including some family.

During a tour they showed us the designated room where a ceramic workshop will hopefully be placed. They were extremely appreciative that we would even consider helping them out with this request, and stated they have been trying to get a ceramic workshop for more than ten years.

A few weeks later, when the equipment arrived we returned to visit. There was a great excitement as staff realized this pottery workshop was a reality. We met the instructor, from a non-profit organization, who gave a demonstration to us and the other staff members who will be helping the clients.

We also met some of the clients who were excited to see new faces visiting them and we could see children of God with earthly disabilities.

Isaiah 64:8, "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."