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APRIL 2004

Arts & At-Risk Youth: Making it Relevant,
Keeping it Real
by Matilda Raffa Cuomo

The arts—whether during or after school—provide opportunities for youth from all backgrounds to do something positive with their talents and time. At Mentoring USA, we realize that exposure to the creative arts helps to create a well-rounded person. The challenge we encounter is how to make the arts accessible in order to expose our youngsters to the many resources and treasures in New York City. With the help of our dedicated and creative mentors, we have been able to find opportunities that really "speak" to our young people.

Showcasing the paintings, drawings and writings of mentees from PS 59 in the windows of Bloomingdale's for the past three years as well as the brightly colored mixed media portraits of Bloomingdale's staff mentors this year, enables Mentoring USA to effectively reach many young people.

Mentoring USA'S BRAVE (Bias-Related Anti-Violence Education ) Juliana program explores the arts largely through workshops, which explore multiculturalism in different contexts. Working with Owen Consulting, we have offered workshops that encouraged mentees to write songs based on their cultural heritage, with the assistance of their mentors. This experience was overwhelmingly positive, and some mentors were inspired to write their own songs as well! Other examples of workshops that Mentoring USA has offered at its sites include the following: African dance, collage making, and mask making. Mentors receive a handbook in training that offers many suggestions for visual arts activities related to diversity, and with library books, which cover cultural and ethnic heroes. We also provide mentors with the quarterly "High 5" calendar, which offers $5 tickets and museum admissions to teens and their mentors.

Artistic expression is a vehicle for expressing feelings at the Mentoring USA "Heroic Choices" program retreats. This program, run in collaboration with the Todd M. Beamer Foundation, serves youth ages 8-12 who have experienced family trauma. It starts with an intensive, weekend-long retreat for parents, caregivers and mentors during which mentors and mentees work together on arts projects. All mentees leave the retreat with photo scrapbooks that they have decorated and inscribed with memories, and with mentoring "treasure chests," filled with their hopes and dreams for the upcoming year of mentoring, which they have painted and decorated to represent themselves, their lives, and their new mentors. In this case, the healing aspect of the arts is emphasized.

Our goal remains simple: to provide creative outlets to underserved youth, to introduce youth to careers in the fine and applied arts, and, most of all, to aid youth in developing collaborative and communicative skills by encouraging creative thinking, self-expression and activism through the arts. But first, with the assistance of their mentor, we have to capture their attention and interest, by exposing them to the full range of artistic expression. Sharing the arts will form a lasting memory for both mentor and mentee.#

Mrs. Cuomo, the former First Lady of New York State, is the Founder and Chairperson of Mentoring USA.

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