We Believe that the Arts:

• Provide children with the opportunity to confront trauma on their own terms,
• facilitate community reconciliation and prevent the isolation faced by abandoned children, and
• are a powerful tool for social change.

Workshops

Arts Education International provides children with the skills they need to survive by organizing, funding, and executing arts outreach programs and vocational training workshops. By providing mentors, supplies, and skill-building workshops, we emphasize a community-development model as opposed to an aid model.  Furthermore, these workshops create jobs, foster new industry, and create opportunity in the communities we serve.

Practical Arts Workshops

Our arts workshops emphasize locally sourced materials and are taught by mentors indigenous to each site’s location.  A vocational training program provides children with the skills to create crafts that are indispensable to their communities, including batik fabric used for clothing and furnishing, baskets used for fish-catching and food storage, beadwork used for adornment and ceremony, as well as workshops in embroidery, crochet and t-shirt and sign printing.

Drama Programs

Our drama workshops build on the traditional West African practice of social reform through public drama, as our students perform plays on child rights, HIV and AIDS awareness, and peaceful conflict resolution for their communities.

Dance and Music Workshops

Our dance and music programs focus on traditional and contemporary styles, promoting inter-ethnic connections and cooperation.  While incorporating utility and ritual, the dance and music workshops facilitate self-expression of personal experiences and hopes for the future.