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Bi-Habawalk Inc. is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting community development through the performing arts and education. We use dance, drama, music, and other aspects of African and Caribbean cultures to inform, educate, entertain, and inspire. Our target communities are those with disadvantaged children and youth, between the ages of five and twenty-five. In addition to our performance-related activities, we provide mentoring programs that provide supplementary education for young people. We also offer foreign language training and programs abroad for adults. A major goal of Bi-Habawalk Inc. is to foster healthy personal development. The aim is to enhance a range of skills, improve self-image and self-esteem, and overall enable participants to realize their potential as productive members of society. Our programs are intended to reduce the incidence of substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, family violence, and poverty. Our substance abuse initiative, for example, will involve educational materials and events aimed at increasing awareness for individuals and the community at large. Bi-Habawalk Inc. will also provide opportunities for those with differing viewpoints on matters related to community issues to speak and listen to one another in a non-judgmental atmosphere. This process can enhance mutual respect, strengthen ties, and enhance sense of community. Bi-Habawalk Inc. supports and will conduct social research to increase public awareness of factors affecting the lives of target communities.
Alternatives to Negative Behavior
Recognized as a way to combat negative behavior, the purported benefits of arts education within the community have been documented through many sources. Harvard’s Project Zero study analyzed 188 reports related to academic improvement and the Association for the Advancement of Arts claims to have found nearly 400 studies that support arts education as a way to support young people. The measured outcomes generally fall into one of two categories: pro-social or positive development and
academic achievement. Many of the indicators of pro-social development include:
better discipline, increased self-esteem, reduced truancy, better relations with adults, more hope for the future, increased motivation, more positive peer associations, less interest in drugs, more resistant to peer pressure, and reduced criminal activity.
Therefore, Bi-Habawalk Inc. and its Theatre For Development will target young people in the community. Our programs will present individuals with opportunities for self-expression as they develop mentally and socially.
Bi-Habawalk Inc. provides effective networking among trained personnel who will act as advisors to young people and offer free mentoring services to ensure that participants not only remain focused on their schoolwork, but also aspire to achieve confidence and appreciate life. We will recruit volunteers who are caring individuals motivated to provide program participants with continuing support, counsel, reinforcement, and constructive example. Caring and connectedness within and beyond the family are consistently found to be powerful factors in protecting at-risk young people from negative behaviors and in encouraging good social skills, responsible values, and positive identity. They will be provided with extra emotional support if necessary through referrals to professional eager to work with participants and appropriately flexible with fees (including the provision of pro bono services).
Bi-Habawalk Inc.’s community development programs: Stand Tall, Shi Otsitsi (“Be Proud”) and Miva mi woe (“Come let’s do it!”), through the Theatre For Development, will increase opportunities for young people to engage in African and Caribbean cultures, as well as increase their opportunity to perform, educate and inspire their community.
This opportunity will allow over ten schools and five youth centers to engage the youth community of the Harlem and the Bronx in New York City, which will reduce the vulnerability of young people in New York City to substance abuse and teenage pregnancy.
Shi Otsitsi (“Be Proud”) is a program offered by the Bi-Habawalk Inc. organization. Through individual lessons and/or in classes, students are taught the poetic and dynamic language, history and geography of Africa. Instruction is available to persons of all ages. The dialects of different regions are taught. Our teachers are highly trained and highly supportive. We genuinely value each and every person in our program.
Whether it is for cultural interest, travel, or business, learning these languages and related information can be richly rewarding and a source of immense pride. In our pilot program, both adults and young people commonly reported a feeling of enhanced identity. Teaching sites are situated in Harlem and the Bronx.
Bi-Habawalk Inc. is pleased to introduce New York to a dynamic dance and drumming program. Miva mi woe (“Come let’s do it!”) is dedicated to crossing cultural, economic, and ethnic boundaries as it provides youth and adults alike with high energy, fun classes in African drum, dance, and folk music. In particular, we are committed to inspiring young people and helping them gain discipline, confidence, and constructive social values through the power of the arts. Another important benefit to participants is enhanced fitness produced by the stretching, strengthening, and aerobic activities of the dance techniques. Harlem and the Bronx will be the locations for classrooms.
Bi-Habawalk's training programs are often free for registered participants.
Research indicates that young people enjoy spending their spare time engaged in the performing arts. Bi-Habawalk is providing them opportunities to do so.
Our workshop programs are tailored to suit schools, libraries, community centers and other venues where children and young people of diverse cultural backgrounds are given practical lessons on aspects of African culture including cloth printing (Adinkra), drum music, dance, poetry, folksongs, games and story-telling. The aim is to promote a high level of appreciation of African culture and build bridges of understanding and acceptance among children and young people within the multicultural New York City society.
Performances:
Performances offer both the performers and audiences the opportunity to experience a rich blend of the best in African and Caribbean drum music, dance, folk songs, story-telling and poetry.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
We have partnered with other youth associations, agencies, and various personnel who are trained in quality assurance involving the monitoring and evaluation of programs and projects. Our programs are continuously assessed in order to enable us to grow by building on our strengths and overcoming limitations.
Exchange Program
Bi-Habawalk Inc.’s art and cultural program will be mainly international, mostly with African and Caribbean audiences. Our mission is to promote educational and cultural awareness through global art and cultural-abroad programs. We will network and link with like organizations to exchange ideas and visits in order to promote understanding, tolerance and harmony among children and young people of diverse cultural backgrounds. We will attend African and Caribbean annual Festivals outside the US if we can afford the cost.
Cultural diplomacy goes beyond borders, languages, and generations. and promotes an expression of value with other cultures while conveying the unique spirit and values of the individual. Bi-Habawalk Inc.’s cultural exchanges will empower, educate, and engage foreign audiences and our American participants to foster a sense of common interests and values. American participants will learn about other cultures while foreign participants, whether hosting American or visiting here, will learn about our culture. and offer the host participants wherever in the world the program takes us to learn some American cultural values too. We believe relationships formed will strengthen the ties of friendship and peace between the citizens of the world. Meeting people from different cultures will expand the horizons of our participants some of whom may not have traveled out of their home country. It would also serve as a source of recreational entertainment, socializing, and meeting different people globally for our participants some of whom may not have the chance to travel out of their home countries.
For these exchange programs Bi-Habawalk Inc. will find suitable accommodations for participants with a host family. Such families would be vetted by the appropriate department in their country. Living with a host family offers the excitement of study abroad in the security of a family setting. Participants will immerse themselves in another culture as they become integrated into family and participate in all of their activities. The duration of these visits will not exceed 14 days, including the arrival and departure days.
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Bi-Habawalk Inc
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Our future
Catch them young
