Diapora of Hope 09

Fifteen women and two men from the United States and Canada were an excited and professional group of artists traveling to Philadelphia, Egypt, Kenya, Guatemala and Nicaragua to participate in BuildaBridge's annual Diaspora of Hope. The artists were joined by scores of local artists in each country as they planned, trained and implemented an arts camp on the themes of hope, peace, and unity with children from very difficult circumstances. The BuildaBridge Classroom model was the structure for each camp. This was the first year Diaspora of Hope conducted a project in Philadelphia with a local partner--a shelter abused women and their children. The mission of Diaspora of Hope is to provide children with a brighter future and build the capacity and sustainable development of local organizations serving these children who live in poverty. The following blogs from around the world describe the events of the week and stories of transformation.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Greetings from Diaspora of Hope Kenya

By Rebekah Wilcox, BuildaBridge Kenya Team Leader and International Program Coordinator


We are patiently awaiting and preparing for the beginning of a wonderful week of camp. So far, we had two productive training events for local artists. The first was covering the BuildaBridge classroom and the second to go over our Peace curriculum. This year, we have five classes covering poetry, dance, theatre, muraling, and photography. We will be working with 70-80 students from Mathare Valley in Nairobi. Most of these students has witnessed extreme violence and continue to see violence on a daily basis in their community (see link on left). BuildaBridge will be using the arts to teach steps to peaceful conflict resolution.


On Friday, four teachers rode into town on Matutus (local bus) and spent the entire day going from shop to shop buying supplies for our classes. This year, we have all but two Kenyan teachers returning as lead teachers. In addition, Celmali Jamie, who taught poetry last year and recently moved to Kenya for a year, returns to teach dance. We also have two teachers from Seattle who are living in Kenya temporarily and currently teach in Kibara, another slum community. Today (Sunday), we are preparing posters for all of our classes, name tags for students and teachers, and finalizing lesson plans. Stay tuned tomorrow for pictures and stories from Day 1!!!
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