Youth Art Haven (YAH), a community-based comprehensive program, aims to address the emotional and social needs of Brazilian youth who have undergone traumatic experiences due to poverty, abandonment, and/or sexual exploitation.
YAH will utilize dance, visual arts, music and writing as therapeutic tools, employing the power of the arts to heal and transform. The program will offer classes in a psychologically supportive environment, providing youth with practical techniques to develop various marketable skills.
Youth will also be trained in small business management, computer skills, and techniques for sustainable living through permaculture, offering transferable skills for self-sufficiency and survival in everyday life and encouraging ecological responsibility.
Youth participants will contribute to the self-sustainability of the program through the proceeds of their artwork, as well as keep a percentage as they establish their capacity for independent livelihoods. Environmentally responsible practices through hands-on involvement with on-site organic farming and natural building projects will build knowledge and skills and encourage a sense of program ownership.
Tapping into the intrinsic connection between culture, community and the earth, Youth Art Haven will promote awareness of these interconnections among the youth.
Youth Art Haven will begin serving youth experiencing adversities on the island of Itaparica near Salvador, in Bahia, Brazil. The program will operate day, weekend, and week long art therapy and permaculture workshops. The program will establish participant groups with the guidance and recommendation of local communities.
Youth Art Haven will employ a team of art educators, artists, dancers, environmentalists, musicians, therapists and writers to work with the youth. Teachers will be trained to teach art using therapeutic methods. As the project grows, it will include a residential program where youth victims of sexual exploitation can find refuge and therapy as they learn an art trade. A residential structure will allow participants to benefit from the program without the negative impact of their current predicaments.
Youth participants will choose to concentrate in one of the following areas of art: dance/movement, music, visual arts and writing. In their chosen areas, youth will be trained in all aspects of producing, merchandizing and distributing their own artwork. The commercial art that youth create and market will monetarily help support the program in a self-sustainable approach, simultaneously generating a sense of participant ownership and investment in the program. Participants will develop marketable skills they can use later in life as they take part in projects such as creating music CDs, publishing their own writing, organizing art exhibits, documentaries, and dance performances. Youth Art Haven will provide youth the opportunity to learn and use computer, communication and media technologies as they produce and market their art, increasing their capacity to compete in today’s society.
Youth Art Haven will have a strong human ecology education focus with environmentalists teaching participants about land usage and food production with stable, productive and ecologically harmonious methodologies. These skills further benefit participants and their communities as they integrate this knowledge to sustainably provide food, shelter, and energy.
Youth Art Haven will have direct relationships with other organizations serving the local communities in order to continue to offer youth educational, residential or vocational support upon completion of the residential program. Relationships with former participants will be maintained through a mentorship program with incoming youth. Long-term follow up, feedback and effectiveness assessment will shape further programming.
Next step
We are currently fundraising to finance the purchase of an area of 20 hectares
on the island of Itaparica, where we will build the Center. The site is located
between two economically impoverished communities, with whom we will collaborate
to address local socio-economic issues. The area is protected as part of the
Brazilian Atlantic Forest Reserve by IBAMA (the federal environmental protection
agency of Brazil). We will use permaculture and bio-construction to build art
centers, communal areas for eating, a visitor center, exposition hall, mini-amphitheater,
staff housing, residential halls and fields to grow our food.
“In these times of economic, climatic, social and political instability
a piece of land can represent a shelter in the storm…and it can be our
refuge in moments of collapse.”
Marsha Hanzi, permaculture pioneer