By Seth Luchemos – Camp Director, Artist Mentor, Business Partner
The theme for our Art Camp was “God’s Masterpiece.” The camp ran December 5th through the 10th at Friends Fellowship Assembly (FFA) with fifty-four students from Have Hope and FFA Church taking classes in music, photography, dance and visual art.
The week was so amazing as we could see and experience the children not knowing anything on day one, but by day two they were all actively participating and executing the lessons learned in the classes. It was such a fulfilling experience for the mentors and the children as well. We have always had students interested in photography, but due to lack of cameras we have not been doing the class. This time we had the class, thanks to the cameras donated by Inverted Arts, and the students had a great time learning and interacting with the cameras!
The ukuleles are now a famous and loved instrument by the children. This was not a common instrument but now we have children able to play the ukulele and they really enjoy it. The music class was able to write a Christmas song which we were not able finish recording due to limited time, but we are planning to have it done soon; hopefully before Christmas.
The art class did an amazing job creating things from paper. This class challenged the students to be creative and use the available materials in their environment to create things. We hope the students will be able to continue practicing the skills they learned during the camp.
We have received good feedback from the parents and requests to keep engaging the children more especially during the holidays. We have also received messages from our social media platforms of parents requesting us to organize more Art Camps closer to their homes so that their children can participate as well. We are exploring ways on how we can do this outside Mathare and generate revenue from it, as parents are willing to pay for their children to learn. This will help to create more income opportunities for the young mentors we work with.
My dream is to raise more mentors and have a team that can run two or more Art Camps at the same time without the need for me to be present.
On behalf of the team and the children, I thank and appreciate Inverted Arts for funding the Art Camp and allowing the children to have time to explore and nurture their talents. I am grateful and honored to be trusted with the opportunity to manage Art Camps with the Inverted Arts.
