WORLD UP EDU: IRC SUMMER PROGRAM WRAP-UP

World Up played a large part in the 2009 class of the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Refugee Summer Academy.  Ebenezer Bond, Executive Director of World Up and Alicia Boone, Class Facilitator, formulated an interactive curriculum based on identity, immigration, and hip-hop.

Throughout the six-week course, the class of nearly 20 refugee youth created powerful pieces that reflected their own personal stories.  A variety of guest teaching artists developed self-revealing work that helped uncover the student’s unique experiences coming to the United States.  In addition to their written work, the students showed a vast improvement in the areas of self-confidence, teamwork, communication, and cultural acceptance.

The students were instantly enthralled by the variety of role models they met, with teaching Artists such as: Blitz the Ambassador (Ghana), La Bruja (Puerto Rico), Spacecraft (NYC), Urban Word Teen poets, Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew (Sierra Leone).  Seeing mature members of their community share experiences helped open the floor to students who at first were too shy or uncomfortable to tell their stories.

At the IRC’s graduation, students from all over the world shared the art they created over the six week course.  World Up EDU’s portion of the graduation consisted of a special presentation from Lobsang Rapten of Tibet, along with a song created collaboratively by the students.  The song combined their many languages, and made use of their new-found language skills and rhyming.

World Up EDU plans to continue working with the International Rescue Committee, but is also developing a full semester curriculum for students in grades nine through 12, and a college-level curriculum.  The future holds a lot of development for this program; the IRC and Brooklyn International High School have invited World Up to develop a curriculum for an afterschool program, which will begin to run from this fall until May of 2010. So please stay involved and support the programs as they grow, and help our children gain a more global perspective.

You can start with a DONATION to the World Up EDU program  HERE.

Please email alicia [@] worldup.org for more information.

WORLD UP!

Photo Credit: Lily Solmssen Moureaux

Tug of War Tour: Pathway to Peace

World Up had the pleasure of hosting Tahani Salah, Palestinian poet and activist, as a teaching artist this summer at the International Rescue Committee’s 2009 Summer Refugee Youth program. Tahani will bring the student’s energy from the summer program to the upcoming Tug of War Tour, a unique performance piece dedicated to bringing “Peace to the Middle East”.

The show will kick-off this fall in New York City featuring original spoken word and hip hop from four dynamic artists: Tahani Salah (Urban Word, Def Jam Poet), Vanessa Hidary aka The Hebrew Mamita (Def Jam Poet), MC Sneakas and MC Mazzi, from the Jewish Israeli/Muslim Persian hip hop group Most Hated. The four are coming together to create a fresh dialogue around identity, religion, racism, and terrorism.

Both spoken word and hip hop will be used as a tool to uncover controversial issues and engage in a heated performance conversation.  The goal of this groundbreaking show is to bridge the gap between Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians bringing them on stage together before a diverse audience. The group will challenge a variety of beliefs, provoke thought and ultimately encourage their audiences to take steps towards advocating on behalf of peace.

The Tug of War Tour is now taking bookings.  For more information email MC Sneakas directly at: Sneakas1@aol.com

In the meantime, check out the Tug of War Tour Promo: