Grants Spotlight: Association to Benefit Children

Research in brain development has shown that exposure to the arts has a significant and lasting impact on children’s development and has proven to help level the “learning field” across socio-economic boundaries. It has been clearly demonstrated that the arts strengthen problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, which add to overall academic achievement and school success. Participation in arts education teach children life skills such as articulating a vision and making decisions, while building self-confidence, self-esteem, self-discipline and an aesthetic awareness. The arts nurture team-building skills and promote respect for alternative viewpoints and the appreciation of different cultures and traditions. For very young children the arts play a central role in cognitive, motor, language and social-emotional development, motivate and engage children in learning, encourage creativity, stimulate memory, facilitate understanding, enhance symbolic communication, promote relationships and provide an avenue for building competence.

Thanks to the steadfast generosity of Variety, the Children’s Charity, the Association to Benefit Children (ABC) has been able to inculcate in the young preschool-age children who attend its Early Childhood’s Education Programs, a love of the arts through a curriculum that incorporates a vast array of arts-based programming throughout the school year. Children are regularly engaged in visual arts, music, dance, and drama, which help to strengthen physical, emotional, and cognitive development and academic achievement in early reading, math, science and social studies skills. The arts often play a therapeutic role in the lives of children who have been battered by debilitating poverty-and worse.

Moreover, by participating in ABC’s arts curriculum, through daily classroom activities, visits from artists, and trips to museums and other cultural institutions, vulnerable children experience the transformative power of the arts. For example, a highlight of the last school year at ABC’s Cassidy’s Place and a supplement to ongoing daily music and movement activities was a weekly master series that exposed students, including children with special educational and developmental needs, to music and dance from around the world including Incan Tribal Drums (“Inca Trail”), Native American earth songs (“The Earth is Your Mother”) and Indigenous anthems from Paraguay (“Akulele”) giving children the opportunity to learn about and celebrate cultures including their own and helping to unite them into a dynamic community that respects and appreciates diversity.

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