Welcome to our मिलिजुली Talk Series 1 facilitated by YoSHAN. YoSHAN is a feminist led network working in Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights.
Today as our guest we have Ms. Sonal Dhanani from Pakistan. Ms, Sonal is founder of organization Parindey working for mental health. She is a member of the National Youth Council by Prime Minister Imran Khan. She is a creative professional, educator and NLP practitioner and art as a therapy facilitator keen on promoting education, volunteerism and mental health practices in Pakistan. She uses arts and culture as her tool to serve humanity. She has been the fellow of Atlantic Council Fellowship called “Emerging Leaders of Pakistan” and “Young Connectors of Future” fellowship by Swedish Institute. She sees art as a uniting force between people irrespective of race, religion, caste, color, gender, ethnicity or language. Sonal also co-facilitated a public narrative module for Swedish Institute.

Infectious disease outbreaks, like the current coronavirus (COVID-19), can be scary and can affect our mental health. While it is important to stay informed, there are also many things we can do to support and manage our wellbeing during such times.
The government is telling us to stay at home and only go outside for food, health reasons or essential work, to stay two metres (six feet) away from other people and wash our hands as soon as we get home. This will mean that more of us will be spending a lot of time at home and many of our regular social activities will no longer be available to us.
During this pandemic, there has been a rise in the mental status of individuals, family and community. We have not faced any such situation, lock-down for this longer. Similarly, suicidal cases are increasing.
We have a conversation with Sonal who uses different forms of arts to engage people and work on their productive side to reduce their stress and anxiety. Recently, Sonal facilitated online art workshop where 60 people participated and received positive response for the same. We are discussing with various aspect of looking after our mental health in COVID19 in first series of talk show- मिलिजुली.