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. According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. 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 30,000 babies are born with the HIV virus each year.
More than 78 percent of the developing world's urban population now lives in slums*. By living in these dangerous conditions, 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 perilous surroundings.
UNICEF recently released this statement on their website:
'Children experience poverty as an environment that is damaging to their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual development. Therefore, expanding the definition of child poverty beyond traditional conceptualizations, such as low household income or low levels of consumption, is particularly important... Children experience poverty with their hands, minds and hearts. Material poverty, for example, starting the day without a nutritious meal or engaging in hazardous labor, hinders emotional capacity as well as bodily grow... By discriminating against their participation in society and inhibiting their potential, poverty is a measure not only of children's suffering but also of their disempowerment.'
ASTEP's programs take place in communities with populations of disadvantaged children who face the issues like those described above; children who obviously, have little or nothing in the way of basic necessities let alone any access/exposure to mentorship programs, arts education or a chance to succeed.
Additionally, there currently exists a significant crisis in our educational system. Conventional methods of education are no longer sufficient in efforts to enlighten our global community towards peaceful resolutions and social balance. With access to information at a child's disposal any moment of the day, our new agenda as educators must be empowered compassionate choice making. The performing and visual arts have always been synonymous with self-expression and catharsis. In conjunction with current learning standards, the arts can provide a visceral experience necessary to ignite a student's curiosity and ability to learn. The arts empower students to believe in themselves, which in turn empowers our exhausted families and beaten communities. Furthermore, the artists who participate in the programming are empowered, emboldened and inspired by these children, thus creating a circular motion of growth. The power of the arts to create change is paramount to ASTEP's programming and mission.
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 believes and demonstrates that collaborative, relational, artistic experiences provide a solid foundation for long term change. Through the arts, ASTEP volunteers challenge students to think outside the box; thinking in terms of possibilities rather than probabilities and creating a practical palette of choices that make happiness attainable and failures productive.
Our programming is carried out by a volunteer base of professionally trained artists who represent a wide array of disciplines including drama, dance, visual art, instrumental music, playwriting, vocal arts, film, and poetry. These remarkable artists, who range from emerging to well established and well known, are trained by ASTEP to serve as volunteer educators. ASTEP prepares these artists, by way of workshops and formalized volunteer training, to be social justice entrepreneurs, educating them about foreign cultural dynamics and enlightening them about the issues surrounding impoverished children.
ASTEP is currently providing services to four communities in three countries; Homestead, FL, New York, NY, Johannesburg, South Africa and Bangalore, India. At each location ASTEP collaborates with local social service and education organizations to define and help solve the problems that particular group of children face. Together, these partnerships create safe spaces where the children and artists work; inviting a deeper investment in the communities' connection to its children and commitment to the arts. Understanding the need for sustainable change, our local partners also assist in maintaining relationships and continuing the work with the children when ASTEP volunteers are not on site.
ASTEP has developed and refined a curriculum model that positively impacts the lives of young participants beyond their time in the program. By incorporating learning standards drawn from the National Endowment for The Arts, The Kennedy Center and other accredited establishments, ASTEP trains its volunteers to deliver programming grounded in arts education that scaffolds and integrates other relevant learning objectives like academics, life skills and HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness. Using art as a catalyst for change, ASTEP has provided these children with a voice, awakened their dreams and given them the essential life skills, dedication to teamwork, self expression, communication and confidence to believe in a future beyond poverty.
