At the age of seven, Altheya, now 19 years old, was sexually assaulted by her cousin who threatened her not to tell anyone. She kept details of the incident a secret and hoped to forget about it. However, some years later during a class discussion at school about children’s rights, Altheya broke into tears remembering her assault. Her teacher took her to see the school’s Guidance Counsellor, a former staff member of the Preda Foundation, who was able to appropriately manage the situation. Altheya was referred to a local social worker who felt she needed therapy and suggested she work with Preda.
At Preda, Altheya engaged in treatment to help her recovery from her past trauma. She was empowered to talk about her experience and filed a legal complaint against her uncle and testified in court against him, withstanding questioning by the defence.
Altheya joined the Preda AKBAY Advocacy Theatre Group, an initiative established to advance the promotion of the children’s rights and empower young people. The group are dedicated advocates of children’s rights and defenders of the environment and so themes relating to mining, sex tourism and environmental destruction underpins many of the group’s artistic productions.
The theatre group is designed to capture youth perspectives and supports the critical analysis of social issues affecting local young people, their families and respective communities. Their productions enrich and develop positive character and personality development through dynamic, productive, fun-filled and value-oriented activities with the participants. The project proudly creates a venue for the young people to enhance their talents as playwrights, stage directors, performers, visual artists, singers, musicians, dancers, choreographer etc through a series of training and participatory artistic interactions.
The Akbay Advocacy Theatre Group have toured in the Philippines and throughout Europe for five years, taking their message to counties as far as Germany, Spain, Ireland, Australia and Japan! Through their drama they have shown how vulnerable children and young people can be to abuse and exploitation and how society can respond to the call for action to address the problem and offer support.
Altheya stared in “Once we had a Dream”, a choreographed musical play telling a moving story of love, tragedy and redemption and sees the actors rein-act true lived experience, giving the musical drama authenticity and integrity.
The Akbay theatre group plan to continue producing plays, stories, poems, music compositions and visual outputs. Besides being a rewarding initiative for young people undergoing therapy to express themselves, it raises awareness amongst local communities of important social issues confronting young people today.
