ADEFUA CULTURAL EDUCATION WORKSHOP
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Mission Statement
Our mission is to create, expand, and offer programs to enhance growth, personal development, and academic success through the study of African culture, music, song, and dance.
About This Cause
Founded in 1985. We present and preserve authentic and traditional cultural arts through hands-on, interactive youth dance classes in classrooms for thousands of students of all ages, summer camps, and a yearlong West African dance ensemble. In all of our programs, our approach is informed by a desire to transform and engage youth through cultural arts experiences.One of the greatest opportunities that came of COVID-19 is that ADEFUA is more committed than ever to our long-term goals. We received a few one-time capacity building and COVID-19 response grant that have allowed us to invest in staff capacity, but we know that if we do not find core support funding we will be unable to sustain this growth. ADEFUA is also leading the efforts to establish a Rainier Valley Creative District with the Washington State Arts Commission. The goals of the Creative District are to preserve the legacy of the district, build deeper arts connections, revive existing cultural arts events and foster new ones, establish a thriving creative hub, increase economic stability, strengthen the creative economy, and promote overall economic health of the neighborhood. The systemic problem we are seeking to address is a deep and pervasive lack of resources to support cultural arts in African immigrant communities throughout our region. There’s a tremendous increase of African American families throughout Southeast Seattle, yet there are relatively few programs that focus on African Arts & Culture. Younger people from African families who have moved to Southeast Seattle have been displaced and are left without an intentional connection to rich cultural resources with elders, youth, arts and traditional background of African culture. COVID-19 and the growing awareness of racial violence has only served to increase the sense of isolation and disconnection among youth from African communities. Our Executive Director and Lead Teaching Artist previously worked as a peer counselor/Parent advocate and Facilitator with the King County Wraparound program as working for both; Community Psychiatric Clinic and Therapeutic Health Services. Additionally, she was a therapeutic in-home foster care provider for 19 year. During her time in these roles, she learned to navigate the juvenile justice system and the systems that impact many of the families that we work with. We apply knowledge from these experiences to our curriculum, structure of group activities, and types of experiences that we provide youth. ADEFUA offers a therapeutic approach that encourages cultural awareness, helps youth learn to express themselves, and experience the joy and rich culture of movement and African arts. We believe that all of these elements of the program lead to stronger social and emotional skills and an overall greater quality of life. Cultural Arts engagement provides an important vehicle for learning, personal growth, and maturation. The program encourages one to see themselves reflected in stable successful adults who look like them and normalizing communal involvement. Traditional African culture is based and sustained around inter-generational relationships and mentorship – all that we do is based around each one, teach one. While elders are traditionally seen as the wise teachers or mentors who offer guidance to youth, we know that mentoring also takes place from youth to elders because youth bring a needed energy, light, and perspective as well. ADEFUA is creating a safe community space that reaffirms and celebrates identity – a space that centers joy, pride, and excitement to be who you are authentically. We believe that it is only out of these spaces, that meaningful systemic change efforts are able to flourish. If we are leading with a rugged obligation or pain our systemic change work will not take hold. We must lead as our truest, most authentic and most whole selves in order to be effective. And out of this ADEFUA is able to enact important community change efforts like the Rainier Valley Creative District, which is working to fuel a creative economy in Southeast Seattle. Across all of our work, we are guided by cultural values of hospitality, generosity, inclusion, and respect. As a community of teaching artists, we are a close-knit family and anyone who comes into our community is treated with the same warmth and acceptance. We believe in a communal way of life and adhere to the mentality that “it takes a village.” Our teaching artists and organization is family centered in a communal sense. Our commitment towards arts and culture in rooted within an African centric value system. This means that everyone is accounted for their learning, expressions, and learned values that develops along the way. The each one-teach one system allows an unspoken objective of self empowerment ~