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Giving Tuesday is here and we hope you will consider supporting us with building our Youth Wellness and Enrichment program to promote resiliency among our children and youths. Every contribution makes an impact! One highlight of this year was our youth mural art project called SEASAW (Southeast Asian Street Art Workshop), a one year program in collaboration with ARTogether and Peralta Hacienda Historical Park. This project was made possible through support from the California Arts Council and the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Grants Program. With a limited budget, we facilitated art activities and created a safe space for 20 at-promise youth from refugee and immigrant families to explore the arts and creativity, and in the end paint a community mural in East Oakland to inspire and beautify our community. Our youth (ages 11-20 years) worked closely with Khmer-American mural artist, Pat Kong, and had a voice throughout the mural design process. Youth participants shared challenges in their community, personal challenges, and the repercussions of the pandemic on their mental health. Youth expressed the desire for their identity and culture to be represented as well as to focus on positivity, hope, and the need to bring change in the world. What we learned throughout SEASAW is that our youths want more opportunities to explore. With your generous contributions, we can strengthen our youth programs. In particular, we can build our Youth Wellness and Enrichment program for our youngest community members (age 5-12 years), to provide culturally and developmentally appropriate support for socio-emotional learning, behavioral health, cultural enrichment, mental health awareness and prevention, and academic support so that our youth can thrive. Will you help us strengthen holistic healing opportunities for our youth on this Giving Tuesday?
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