WHO WE ARE

Home Away from Home is a senior organization that aims to provide engaging, creative, and socially enriching activities for seniors. They hope to enhance the social interaction, promote creativity, improve mental and physical health, and provide a platform for seniors to showcase their talents. This foundation has been founded in 2003 and its main objective is to ensure that their members enjoy life fully after retirement.

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The Senior Citizen Recreational Center is also focused on the wellbeing of the elderly. They provide their senior citizens the possibility to socialize & interact with each other through various activities, on a weekly basis, which stimulate the seniors’ social skills, while having fun as well.

 

The National Institute of Art (NIA) is an interdisciplinary well-established art institution operating as a nationally and internationally recognized institution of the performing and visual arts inclusive of gymnastics and geared towards guiding the preservation, training, development, and promotion of these art forms. They do this by delivering classes to the public, forming performance groups, granting or assisting in the receipt of scholarships for outstanding or prospective performers/artists and for (potential) teachers. In general, to stimulate individuals and groups working in the same field. NIA cooperates with national and international institutions which are pursuing similar goals. NIA engages in developing curricula, rendering performances, producing programs, organizing lectures, workshops and other types of meetings and events connected to their objectives. They are mostly active in the arts and education sector.

 

WHAT WE DO

In 2023 NIA started and completed a mental health art project, called Total Theater, for 91 kids and teenagers focusing on using dance, singing, drama, yoga, movement, visual art and coaching to promote Social Emotional Learning. The project is geared towards training mental flexibility in in the wake of historic traumatic events like hurricane IRMA and the COVID pandemic. This program hoped to strengthen the participants mental flexibility in the light of future life changing events. The participants, kids and teenagers were referred to NIA through school counsellors, and the recruitment was also open to all public. The program was taking place on Saturdays, for 6 consecutive hours where children feel at home, connect with each other in between classes, and explore their many talents in a safe space, while learning and practicing social emotional skills under the eye and training of multiple professional teachers and a psychologist. This was a very successful program funded by R4CR.

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Under this FCP budget, this program will be able to continue and include these two elderly foundations as their participants. This will enrich this program even further due to the intergenerational learning than can be facilitated in the classes for all target groups. The program will include weekly classes specifically designed for the seniors in all the disciplines, and they can be included in the original program on the Saturday, where they can mingle with the children, and teenagers, and have their own classes too. At the end of this program, they will join in a performance. This Total Theater Program will last 1 year.

 

WHO WE SERVE

The target group consists of >100 seniors from both organizations. The classes provided will be accessible to all, as they will take place at their respective locations (close to NIA). The classes are open for all seniors, and they can indicate their interests and sign up. The target group has shown interest in learning the cultural SXM dance, the Ponum, and specifically the small group coaching with a psychologist will assist some members who are battling some social-emotional challenges and loneliness.

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An additional target group will be the youth. Particularly one class with children aged 7- 11, and another class with teenagers (>12), the third class will be the seniors.

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They will ‘find’ their students through open calls to the community, through word to mouth and social media and through school counsellor referrals.

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