In 2013 SUMMER HEROES launched it’s OUTREACH programme.
The SUMMER HEROES programme follows a curriculum that promotes creativity, therapeutic art practices and social awareness and development in children. It’s Outreach activities are specifically designed to assist NGOs or ‘good causes’ by tailoring an element of the SUMMER HEROES programme towards that cause. We are usually invited to assist and if we have the resources and time we accept.
Through active participation by children in these activities, we encourage and expose them to volunteerism for goodwill by increasing their awareness of human-led movements towards positive change. Currently the children participating are either those who attend the events we are invited to assist or they are children signed up with our programme for this purpose – such as with the those who walked as superheroes for LUPUS awareness.
Parents can register their children as ‘volunteers’ for these activities and we will contact them when an event is confirmed to check their availability and interest. In the future, when funding is in place, the children we work with annually will also fill this post – those from the homes and centers and those with special needs we have already worked with. In this way they can pursue their ‘good deeds’ and develop their social responsibility and awareness to complement the activities they were already exposed to as ‘superheroes,’ while working with artists and art therapists in the programme.
SUMMER HEROES invites children to psychologically embrace their abilities and talents through the invention of their personal superhero avatars.The approach taken by the OUTREACH programme is fundamental to SUMMER HEROES as it aims to contribute to a sense of responsibility and leadership capacity in children from an early age (6 to 10 years). In this way they move beyond imagining the good they would pursue with their ‘super’ powers and actively participate in a series of ‘good’ deeds in the real world.
Hopefully such projects and the public promotion of such projects would encourage young citizens to continue asking informative questions about the world in which they live. And to do so from an early age and at specific developmental stages in their lives.
Such projects would also encourage them to develop a sense of awareness about that world and a conviction about their positive roles, and the possibilities they can create and enact within it.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW PHOTOS FROM THE NATALIE AFFONSO LUPUS FOUNDATION OUTREACH 2013 ON FLICKR
CLICK HERE TO VIEW PHOTOS FROM OUR TOBAGO OUTREACH 2013 ON FLICKR
CLICK HERE TO VIEW PHOTOS FROM THE JUST BECAUSE FOUNDATION OUTREACH 2013 ON FLICKR