Art has its own unique and special way of spreading self expression and magnifying the voices of communities around the world. TPP grantees incorporate all forms of art and encourage individuals to create with their mind, body and spirit.
Whether it is a workshop to empower youth or a training system to amplify the skill set of hopeful adults, art is always present. The grantee projects below beautifully demonstrate how art can be perceived, and that fostering communities and uplifting individuals is an art form in and of itself. When people are supported and given the resources to excel, the desire to explore, spread and create art becomes more valuable and present in everyday life.
Spee Arts Cultural Centre – Spee Arts Gallery Cultural Centre
Spee Arts Gallery Cultural Centre is a project that is engaging vulnerable displaced youth as peace advocates in the Northwest region of Cameroon. This project will address the recent and ongoing socio political crisis in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon. Many souls and properties have been lost, some people have lost their hard earned jobs; others their right to education, and a fair amount of young girls becoming early age mothers. In recognizing this, Spree Arts Gallery Centre is determined to mitigate these negative actions.
In doing so, they began with engaging twenty vulnerable youths in an artistic training to help strengthen and sustain their lives, and create peace advocates. Their motive behind this initiative is to engage youth in an arts training to let them forget some of their losses suffered as a result of this ongoing crisis. Additionally, they promote peaceful coexistence in diversity. The seed grant from The Pollination Project is important to help acquire materials and accomplish the program’s goals.
Susana, Cláudia, Vera, And Yasmine – Restoring The Practice Of Kaingáng Ceramics
This project was born from a collective of four women. What moves them is the desire for ceramics practice in the Kaingáng Indigenous Lands of RS/Brazil to become part of their daily life, and a network of collaboration among the Indigenous Lands (ILs). Ceramics is the fundamental aspect of their culture, and nowadays it is only residually produced and almost disappearing throughout centuries of plundering and loss of territory. This recovery is vital, because the ceramic practice can reestablish ties with the earth and the land, and revive the memory of the Kaingáng people in the present moment.
In the future, the ceramics will constitute a source of income for the Kaingáng. From the knowledge of the ancestors, the Kanhgág Kófa (elders) who still master this practice, will teach the younger relatives moving between Kaingáng ILs of Rio Grande do Sul. The TPP grant will pay for the transportation of the elders between the ILs and the possibility of making a website in three languages – Kaingáng, Portuguese and English in order to reach more people, especially the Kaingángs.
Jectone Ooko And Francis Odhiambo – Building Staff Capacity In Schools
In Kenya there is a gap between the training that teachers receive at colleges and the on the ground curriculum, especially amongst the changing trends in digital technology in education and curriculum reforms. There is a need to continuously train teachers to conform to the new trends and improve the quality of instructions in the classrooms.
Building Staff Capacity In Schools organizes workshops and pieces of training on capacity buildings to try to reach out to the specific needs of teachers, including competency-based curriculum reforms and digital technology education.
La Madriguera Creaciones Escénicas – Integral Artistic Project In Favor Of The Gender Equality
Integral Artistic Project in Favor of the Gender Equality project believes in art as a way to work with people not only in terms of culture and entertainment but as a vehicle and tool to take messages that help them to raise awareness about social problems.
Nowadays 9 women die every day in Mexico due to violent causes and 6 out of every 10 have suffered violence at some point in their lives. This project works in urban communities in Mexico City to supply artistic workshops to teenagers. They apply theater techniques to help people realize that they could be living with violence in their daily lives, and how to express themselves if it’s happening.
They will take their program to Puebla, one of the states in Mexico where the figures of murders have risen during the last years, in order to collaborate with local organizations. In order to prevent violence, Interal Artistic Project in Favor of the Gender Equality project will educate and prepare young people for living in a country with less violence against women.
Nyuyki Keafoon Joan Mary – Strengthening Positive Youth Development Of Juvenile Inmates
Strengthening Positive Youth Development of Juvenile Inmates seeks to promote positive growth and address employment barriers faced by juvenile offenders and recidivism among juveniles in Bamenda Central Prison in Cameroon. Nyuyki Keafoon Joan Mary is a social worker and her greatest passion has always been to work with vulnerable and underprivileged youth. This project involves training and supporting 30 juvenile inmates in weaving and beading for income generation as an alternative income generating activity.
This project also includes educational programs with the inmates. The grant will help facilitate the training program and purchase and donate training equipment to these juveniles and also help create a platform for creating job opportunities after release from detention.
Gerald Komen – Organic Strawberry Farming
Most of the youth in the community of Nakuru, Kenya lack an opportunity to pursue a good education and struggle to make ends meet. Coming from a community whose main background is farming, Gerald Komen decided to empower youth by starting an organic strawberry farm, to improve their everyday life. The funds from the TPP grant will allow this community to acquire more seedlings, expand the farm, and continue to provide youth training.
Blessing Mary Ocheido – Improving Mobility & Accessibility For Nigerian Students
Improving Mobility & Accessibility for Nigerian Students aims at improving educational opportunities for students with disabilities through addressing the human rights and dignity of persons with disabilities in Nigeria. According to WHO, Nigeria has the highest number of out of school kids, totaling over 8 million kids. Due to socio-cultural impediments, most of these kids have a physical disability, which often leads to abandonment or being used to solicit for alms.
This project is important to build a society where no one is left behind and everyone – irrespective of disability – is empowered to be independent and productive. Blessing Mary Ocheido was inspired to pursue this through as someone living with a disability. Following a medical injury at the age of three, she became paralyzed from the waist down. Over the years, she has had to build disability ramps in the schools she attended, and in the places she has lived and worked. These challenges are the inspiration to better the lives of people going through a similar struggle.
Education is the major key in improving the quality of life of the millions of persons with disabilities in Nigeria. The Pollination Project grant is a very vital resource in order to procure mobility aids for children with disabilities and to install access ramps in public secondary schools in Nigeria. By doing this, youth will be empowered and seen as equally important members of the society.
