Children in Poverty
One Billion children – one in every two children worldwide – live in poverty. Most come from families that subsist on less than $1 a day. This type of debilitating poverty is the main contributor to what UNICEF is calling ‘childhood deprivation’ -- lack of adequate food, safe drinking water, sanitation, health, shelter, education and access to information.
Children in poverty struggle for basic survival. Daily, they are faced with war, disease, and disaster. They are victims of HIV/AIDS, sex trades, abuse, slavery and malnutrition. Fifteen million children are orphaned each year due to the rampant HIV/AIDS pandemic. In India, which has the largest number of AIDS orphans of any country, over five million people are HIV-positive and over 30,000 babies are born with HIV each year. Africa has more than 5.3 million known AIDS sufferers. By age twenty, one in three women worldwide are infected with the virus.
More than 78 percent of the developing world's urban population now lives in slums (UN - Habitat). By living in these dangerous conditions, these children are immediately deprived of a childhood and of the chance to carry out personal aspirations. Circumstances like these trap children into developing a plethora of detrimental health, psychological and social problems to cope with their surroundings.
ASTEP’s programs take place in communities with populations of disadvantaged children who face the issues like those described above. Children who obviously, have limited or no access/exposure to mentorship programs or arts education.Our Goal
With such statistics, it can be difficult to be optimistic about the future, but, from its inception, ASTEP has striven to help reverse these trends. ASTEP’s main goal is to create a community of artists who are actively engaged in using their talents to raise awareness about the plight of the children we serve and to dynamically assist by volunteering at our programs.
ASTEP’s hope is to cultivate safe spaces in these communities where these children can learn to communicate, express, and develop constructive decision-making skills by using the arts as a catalyst and by interacting with our participating volunteer artists/teachers and local partnering organizations. Topics covered range from self-empowerment and positive future-building to HIV/AIDS awareness.
Artists from all over the globe (including recent and current Juilliard, New York University, Miami University, Furman University, Santa Clara University students), Broadway professionals, and local talent serve as volunteer teachers for ASTEP.
Each ASTEP experience caters to the needs of the particular community it works in. Every workshop, camp or project centers on a theme that challenges the children and volunteers to find fresh and exciting ways to further develop the essential life skills that will help these youths deal with the difficult circumstances that surround them.
Past themes have included:
“Live to Learn, Love to Live, Learn to be Yourself”
“Art in Action”
“The World is Your Stage”
"Walking on Common Ground"
"Opening Doors"
"Wake Up and Dream"
"This is your mission if you choose to accept it!"
"The World is Listening... Tell Your Story"
"Sopumelela - We Will Rise Above"
"Inkhululeko - Freedom"
Working alongside local organizations to define and solve the problems these children face and keeping in mind ways to ensure self-sufficiency is also a steadfast ASTEP requirement. Our local partners also assist in maintaining relationships and continuing the programming with the children when ASTEP volunteers are not on site.
ASTEP’s hope is to find compatible partnerships so as to one day bring our programming to all parts of the world.
