ArtWorks For Youth

ArtWorks for Youth began offering after school art instruction to under-served students in New York City in 2000. Through a cultural exchange program with another organization, ArtWorks for Youth ran a month-long program in Port Elizabeth. It was through this project that we decided our work was more necessary in South Africa, as there is little in the way of after school programming for students here. We began offering art projects three times a year until 2009 when we expanded our program to run year-round.

Artworks for Youth believes in the transformative power of the arts. They offer free visual art instruction to under-served students in Port Elizabeth, in South Africa's Eastern Cape, and academic support in reading and writing. The program also works to place students in appropriate schools.

In most schools in the United States and South Africa, art education programs are the first to suffer from budget cuts. For several years, ArtWorks for Youth filled the gap by creating programs in seven schools and community-based organizations in three boroughs in New York City. Students took courses in photography, silk-screening, collage, painting and drawing, and book-binding after school.

In 2002, an ArtWorks for Youth middle school program in New York established a relationship with a school in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Through another non-profit organization, a cultural exchange took place between the American and South African schools. As a result of the exchange, ArtWorks for Youth shifted all programming to South Africa beginning in the spring of 2003.

The program's founder and director, John V. Lombardo, MSW, is a collage artist, bookbinder, and educator who is originally from Chicago. For this assignment, Lombardo gave the students prompts that elicited poetry, photography, sculpture and other visual art that speak to place, memory, and the complexity of one's origins.

ArtWorks for Youth has had a series of homes in the 18 years we have been working with underserved students in Port Elizabeth. We have shared space with schools and other non-profit organizations. Our current home shares space with a creche in Joe Slovo Township, and while we are experiencing our best relationship with the administration at Silindokuhle Creche, we are in desperate need of our own space. We are currently at half capacity due to space issues, and we have been unable to continue our skills-building program, as shared space does not allow for e equipment and necessary security.

We are currently seeking funding to begin Phase I of a Three-Phase building plan. Phase I includes the following:

Three classrooms Conversation pit, Abolutions Storage Area

Vegetable garden

The Eastern Cape tops other provinces in terms of food scarcity (Steenkamp et al.; 2018.) Section 27 of the South African Constitution not only grants the right to sufficient food and water, it goes on to say that “The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of each of these rights.”

One way in which the state takes measures to feed its citizens is via feeding programs within schools. Because of the inaccuracy of records regarding enrolment as well as the queueing of teachers in food lines, the reliance of school governing bodies to manage funding for school feeding programs, the per-student rations are quite low and a full meal is not provided to all students.

As in many parts of the world where food is scarce, the issue in South Africa is access, not actual food supply.

AWFY’s vegetable garden will supplement our feeding program. Students will be responsible for planning and harvesting, as well as preparing the food for the woman who cook breakfast and lunch.

Kitchen

The majority of AWFY students:
* Do not eat breakfast.
* Rely on school feeding programs for lunch.
* Eat rice or another starch for supper.
* Suffer from malnutrition.
The AWFY kitchen will serve breakfast to neighbourhood students and lunch to all AWFY

after school students on a daily basis.

Library

While twelve libraries that recently closed in the Eastern Cape (Pijoos; 2019,) were not located in Port Elizabeth, the few libraries here face the same funding challenges as those that closed and are constantly in danger of the same fate.

(Not one of the schools our students attend has a lending library. The closest public libraries in the areas where our students reside are nearly an hour walk and obtaining a library card is very difficult. Further, while high school students in Port Elizabeth have short story reading within the curriculum, few schools read novels until grade eleven or twelve. We began a library two years ago and have about 1,500 books for students in grades K – 12.

There are only a handful of AWFY students who own books, and those are provided by our academic support program. There are very few publishing houses in South Africa, and they are quite small. The majority of books sold in bookstores in South Africa are imported and quite expensive. In addition to the import tax placed on books, South Africa also imposes a luxury tax. These taxes together mean a 100% or more mark up on books sold in South Africa. The exorbitant cost of books makes them inaccessible to AWFY students.

Medical Facility

(AWFY students only see a doctor when they are in pain or in an emergency situation. When finally present at a dentist's office, it is usually too late to save a tooth. Not a single of my students has the luxury of a medical check-up. Our students have no access to any type of medical care beyond the emergency room of a public hospital or a mediocre clinic.

Budget

Building, Labor (itemized below) Computers
USB Drive
Desks

Chairs
Science Kits
Learning Space Designer/Project Manager IT infrastructure set up
Researcher for 10 months

A Success Story :

Sela, written by three Primary School students from Joe Slovo township in Port Elizabeth, was a Artworks for Youth project.

Sela is the first completed film and tells the story of 10-year-old Kamva, who resides in Joe Slovo Township and carries the burden of his mother's heavy drinking. Using just one professional actor, our students, and other Joe Slovo community members, the film was shot by Rafieka Davis and Swirlcose Films. The writers of Sela are three seventh and eighth grade students who wrote the screenplay from their own struggles with heavy drinkers in their families. The film was released last year.