Doctors of Joy
São Paulo - Brazil
Wellington Nogueira created an organization devoted to bringing happiness into the lives of children in hospitals through the dramatic art of clowning. Through his program he strives to give this form of artistic expression a predominantly social character in an effort to uplift Brazilian hospitals.
Inspired by many years of work with the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit in NY‚ In 1991, Wellington Nogueira gave life to Doctors of Joy, a non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating some of the children's suffering and to bring a humanizing element into hospital care. His model uses clowns to work with hospitalized children, their families, and with doctors and nurses throughout the city of São Paulo.
The Doctors of Joy objective is to make it possible for children and teenagers in hospitals, their families and medical care professionals, to experience simple and pure joy within a tense hospital environment. They achieve this objective by:
- Using their knowledge as clowns with art and sensitivity to evaluate the needs of each child‚ putting their resources – tricks, magic, juggling – at his or her service;
- Giving back to the child a little control (over body and life) that was taken away when he or she became ill and hospitalized;
- Encouraging a more positive and active attitude toward illness and recovery.
Wellington's fundamental idea is to make the clowns available to children, hoping they can help them regain control over their own lives and bodies, an element that is frequently lost in the often invasive and traumatizing process of a hospital stay. The child-clown interaction begins as soon as the actor visits the child and asks permission to enter the room. Each visit's "script" is ad-libbed by both child and actor (though, for the actor, it requires significant coaching and training). This starts a process of awareness and socialization that helps the children and often the families come to terms with the illness and deal with it together. It also gives children moments of happiness that bring their healthier side to the fore.
With the objective to transfer knowledge and disseminate information, the Doctors of Joy developed the Center of Research and Education, which main activities include:
- Train doctors, interns, and nurses as multipliers who will embrace new attitudes and different options for treating diseased children in the hospital setting,
- Systematizing the knowledge brought by the clowns work in the hospitals,
- Develop researches and publications,
- Structure courses and workshops for diverse public
- Provide support to school works related to the Doctors of Joy
Through a sophisticated media strategy, Wellington is also planning to use the Doctors of Joy as a means to disseminate health prevention messages to children. Diverse subjects like basic elements of hygiene, nutrition, and healthy living will be incorporated into national children's programming. Eventually, Wellington expects to extend the impact of humor in health to other needy populations, such as the elderly and the mentally disabled.
Wellington and Andrea Shpak