Therapeutic Arts Program

The Therapeutic Arts Program has operated for more than 16 years in Kenya, Tanzania, and, more recently, Uganda.

 

For approximately two weeks each year, visiting professionals from North America, Europe, and Australia collaborate with East African cultural workers to conduct paraprofessional arts therapies workshops for individuals working with vulnerable populations. Nurses, community health workers, arts facilitators, social workers, refugee settlement officers, teachers, and counselors have participated in the workshops, many for multiple years. 

 

People who complete the training program take back to their communities the skills and knowledge gained and apply it to their work with children, youth, and families. The overall Therapeutic Arts Program is supported by both visitor and East African leadership teams. The annual training program is coordinated on the ground by GAA’s Kenyan staff.

IMPACT Report

Trained more than 80 African therapeutic artists who provide arts-based programming in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda 

  • Provided train-the-trainer therapeutic arts workshops to 40 additional cultural workers, facilitated by seasoned Therapeutic Arts trainees, with additional workshops planned 

  • Reached over 10,000 vulnerable persons

 

  • —GAA’s Therapeutics Arts Program helps to provide spaces where children and youth who are routinely stigmatized can gain a sense of belonging, and it supports their use of the arts for self-expression, which can foster a sense of agency, resilience, and increased confidence. Below are quotes from local paraprofessionals trained in the program who work directly with children and youth: 

    Grace:“We get positive feedback about how the program has helped with staying away from drugs, prostitution, and crime. Parents have shared appreciation that the kids perform better in school, concentrate, and connect better to others.”

    Maeda:“The parents appreciate what I am doing with the children. One father told me after I talked to the child, he started attending school…. The teenagers have said, ‘I was thinking very differently before you helped me.’ They say I’ve helped them a lot.”

  • — GAA collaborates with faculty from a variety of universities that offer arts therapies educational programs, including consistent involvement from faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, for the purpose of providing paraprofessional level counseling and art therapy education for working with children, youth, and families. 

    — These faculty members and other creative arts therapists, in collaboration with the East African Leadership Team, work with GAA to develop and continually refine the curriculum and educational materials used in the training workshops.

  • — The Therapeutic Arts Program currently consists of visual, music, dance, creative writing, and/or drama focused projects in rural and urban locations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

    — The training program is conducted collaboratively with East Africans and is aimed at the development of an African-centered model of arts therapies. 

    — The capable and innovative therapeutic artists that Global Alliance works with have achieved recognition in their communities for meaningful programming and significant results with children, youth, and families. 

    — The Therapeutic Arts Program has recently made available small grants for GAA partners in East Africa who are “graduates” of the training program, leading to the funding of a safe sex project for young women in the slums; social/emotional support programming for children with cancer, adolescent orphans, and youth in refugee settlements; and a sexual and reproductive health and rights education project to lessen teenage pregnancies and promote young mothers’ return to school.