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Dear Grace Art Camp Families,

We are looking forward to another amazing summer in 2012 -- new continent, new country and new stories! Look for more information soon; registration will be available around March 1.

Esme Culver
Camp Director
Grace Art Camp

Grace Art Camp in East Africa
Summer 2011

Art with the Girls of Daraja Academy

This summer at Grace Art Camp we will be involved in a partnership with Daraja Academy, an all girls’ high school in Kenya. Daraja, which means “bridge” in Swahili, is one of the only few free secondary schools in the whole country. Daraja Academy allows girls, who would never dream of the possibility of obtaining a high school education, the amazing chance to do just that. This opportunity dramatically changes their lives and in turn brings positive possibilities to their communities. As we embrace “Tales of the Serengeti” at Grace Art Camp this summer, we will build our own “bridges” between the children at Grace Art Camp and the girls of Daraja Academy, so far away in Kenya, bringing all of us closer together through shared art and stories, and creating a wonderful opportunity for us to learn about one another’s lives by building relationships, as individuals and as a community.

Every week during camp, we will integrate stories, pictures, and art sent to us by the girls of Daraja Academy into our assemblies and studios. Campers who choose to will have the chance to respond with their own art and stories, and at the end of the summer we at Grace will send back to our friends at Daraja Academy a little what they have given to us—stories inspired by what we have learned, drawings and paintings and art about life here in Oregon. We will discover how different, or perhaps not so different after all, our dreams and visions are from those of our new friends in Kenya. And in addition, we hope to send them another gift: the money to send another girl to Daraja Academy to make possible change and opportunity for another life. We will be raising the funds through the sale of friendship bracelets that the campers make themselves. Older campers will have the opportunity to continue the friendships we are beginning and bridges we are building long after camp by getting a pen—or perhaps art—pal at Daraja.

This will be a summer of building bridges – ways of connecting with the world and those who are journeying through life in our times – building bridges from Grace Art Camp to new friends and relationships which will impact our lives in an amazing way.

We look forward to you being a part of it all.

Harambee Centre, Western Kenya

As we venture into the region of the Serengeti and East Africa this summer, we will be reading stories and learning about the art and culture of this beautiful part of the world. We’ll be focusing keenly on the countries near the Serengeti: Kenya, Tanzania and discovering stories of the Masai tribes and their routes up and down East Africa.

As Grace Art Camp evolves into a new global dimension, moving closer than ever before to the cultures and peoples of the world, we look forward to connecting with some wonderful people in Kenya who are involved in their own amazing programs to improve the lives of their people.

The Harambee Centre in the village of Chwele, Kenya and the Daraja Girls Academy in Daraja, Kenya are eager to create new and exciting relationships with Grace Art Camp through our art, our conversation and our stories. Here is a little description about them both.

About Harambee and the Village of Chwele

The village of Chwele is located in western Kenya, near the Ugandan border. Chwele is a rural village near to the largest semi-open market in Kenya where people from many ethnic groups and regions come to buy and sell goods on market day. There are approximately 58,000 people living in the surrounding area, and about 10,000 living in the core community.

This region of Kenya, along with the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa, faces a range of troubling health and economic development issues. Residents suffer from poverty and food insecurity due to ineffective agricultural management systems, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other educational and economic factors. According to the United Nations Population Division statistics, the life expectancy in Kenya currently averages less than 55 years, and in 2007 carried an HIV prevalence rate of roughly 6%percent. These health indicators, coupled with harsh demographic realities – 43% percent of the population is under the age of 14 – translate to an acute need for effective, preventive community health care and health education.

Construction of Harambee Centre, a 7,000 sq. ft. community center located in Chwele is scheduled to be completed this year. The Centre will provide space for training and support programs in HIV/AIDS, micro-credit enterprises, computer literacy, nutrition education, dental hygiene, a library, youth leadership training/community service program and volunteer guest rooms.

It is our dream at Grace Art Camp that we will be able to assist Harambee Centre and the people of Chwele this summer and we are looking forward to an exciting opportunity to make our dreams come true.

To be on our mailing list or to receive brochures for Grace Art Camp or Art Classes, contact Mariann at 503-287-0418 ext. 102 or at
mariann@grace-memorial.org