The Heart and Soul program aims to support children’s psycho-emotional development through artistic expression.
Finding stability in the arts
The hope is to allow children to express themselves through art, while building confidence in themselves and in life.
Vulnerable children have stories to tell, feelings to let out, hardships to externalize, worries to contend with. Words often make them feel vulnerable, and are difficult to muster—as they are for anyone trying to express complicated emotions.
Art is instead a much more indirect form of expression, though one that can be deeper, if anything because its creative and playful character helps appease restraints and apprehensions.
Working with one’s hands, moving, singing is in-itself soothing. Children learn to center themselves, and find balance and focus through their bodies, away from complicated and difficult emotions, and other distractions.
Art leads to tangible results, of which children can be proud.
It very concretely teaches children lessons they will hopefully carry with them for life: that they have talents, and that it is worth pursuing their imagination, being confident of their ideas, working in groups, relying on others, and helping their peers. Children may even realize that beauty can be found in simplicity.
building on solid ground
The Giulia Foundation has been running a pilot project since May 2016 for children ages 2-16 residing at a homeless shelter in nearby Maryland. Deborah and Tommaso, along with a group of volunteers including teens from local middle and high-schools, have been working with children in weekly sessions primarily focused on crafts and drama. Vulnerable children there include mostly children of homeless and refugee parents.
First and foremost, the project has been a wonderful opportunity to help children.
But it has also offered a window onto the world of vulnerable children, revealing precious insights into their lives, needs, and aspirations.
This inside knowledge is essential to design programs tailored for children’s needs. We learned to bring additional volunteers to work with the more restless or younger children, leave time to interact with the crafts we created, weave-in a moment of singing to calm spirits and unify the group, and encourage older children to work with the younger as mentors.
These sessions would not have been possible without the dedication, patience, creativity, and positive spirit of our volunteers. This pilot program has allowed us to identify key volunteers in the Washington DC area who might lead future projects, and to introduce ourselves to schools with which we hope to build longer-term partnerships around volunteer programs.
plans for the future
The heart-and-Soul program is the main focus of the Giulia Foundation for the immediate future.
Our goal is to extend the program to:
- More children. We hope to work with more shelters and homes around the DC area, in order to help more children of diverse backgrounds, including abandoned children, homeless children, and refugees.
- More volunteers. We will strive to establish longer-term relationships with schools in the DC area in order to offer regular and structured volunteer opportunities for middle and high-school students to get to know and help vulnerable children.
- More professionals. We hope to enlist the regular support of professional teachers of arts and crafts, drama, and music, to design projects, lead groups of volunteers, and teach other volunteers how best to interact with children.
- More partners. To reach more children, and offer a richer set of activities to them, we hope to partner with selected organizations in the DC area, such as music schools and art centers.
Testimonials
““You can’t see me,” said one little boy only after some time, and while hiding behind chairs in a corner. “No-one can see me.” But slowly, the laughter of his peers, and the first cardboard houses that emerged, began to lure him into the group. Gradually he took up a piece of cardboard, some scissors and scotch tape, and began his own creation. He was meticulous, careful, absorbed in his work—and quiet. As he eventually placed the stairs to the first floor, he asked me in a gentle voice, if I could pass him the glue stick. He had forgotten that I could not see him. He later told me his house would be red; he would continue working on it.”
“I have never seen the kids so focused and concentrated...
...The things you guys are able to create with the kids just amazes me week after week.”