FCL Updates: Haitian Girls Create Transformation Through the Arts

The Haitian earthquake displaced many families, increasing the sources of trauma for some girls and leaving others with less than an ideal level of education to guide their goals for the future. Adolescent girls from Bolous, in the J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO) tent city, and in the YWCA camp at Petionvillle, had an opportunity to develop new skills as peer counselors and to explore their own capacity to create change through the arts. They learned to listen and to share their stories through narratives, poetry, visual arts and photography, presenting exhibitions for their communities in June. Their resulting anthology will serve as a global gift, to inspire arts advocacy and the concept of transformation (seeing the world through new eyes)-- for youth in Haiti and in other Full-Circle Learning communities.

Girls United: Haiti Through Our Eyes, a project of Full-Circle Learning, the Meridian Foundation and the United Nations Foundation, involved the participation of professional artist-educators from multiple genres. Kathryn Adams and Holiday Reinhorn taught creative writing skills, John Paul Thornton gave visual arts workshops, Nadia Todres led the photography group, Actor Rainn Wilson led drama exercises, and Valerie Velazquez mentored the girls in multiple areas. Local youth served as translators and, of course, anthology contributors. (For more photos, see the photo gallery. For project details and an upcoming reading of the anthology, watch the website (www.girlsunited.info)