Creative safe spaces for girls as a vital strategy for recovery and development: an analysis of the Musichana Hamuka (Girl Awakening) program in the DRC

This paper illustrates how creative activities in safe, female-only spaces can support healing and shift power for girls and women in places dominated by patriarchal structures, neo-colonial forces, and ongoing conflict. This is explored through analysis of the Musichana Hamuka (Girl Awakening in Swahili) Program in Goma city, North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), run by the international nonprofit Colors of Connection (CC). This program provides targeted, intensive support to young adolescent girls (aged 10–14) in poor, insecure urban neighborhoods. Musichana Hamuka facilitates female-only safe spaces and mentorship for these girls, weaving together a curriculum of creative activities to nurture their social and emotional health, mitigate trauma, and provide foundational life skills. With an autoethnographic approach, Mallie's observations of girls, young women, staff and community in program activities are used to analyze the impact of these activities on girls and women and their experience within their broader social and political context. Our analysis suggests that the small-scale intimacy of safe space settings can catalyze larger-scale power shifts for community development and gender equality. Our analysis also suggests that creative processes can be instrumental in overcoming oppression, as they get to the heart of a contested site of struggle for oppressed peoples: the power to define reality.