Emily Carr Institute - Art, Design, Media (ECI) has teamed up with African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to develop "Centres of Excellence for African Children's Art and Science."

One in five African children die before they reach their sixth birthday, almost one-third are malnourished, two out of five are child labourers, 12 million are AIDS orphans, 2.5 million have HIV. Bad-news-Africa as usual. Nothing bright to report?

Dr. Assefa Bequele and his colleagues at the newly created African Child Policy Forum decided to dream high - all the way to the establishment of Centres for Excellence in African Children's Art and Education. With Vancouverite Zera Karim (Uganda born) as a facilitator, a collaboration was obtained with the eminent Emily Carr Institute (ECI) in Vancouver, in the person of Professor Sam Carter. The original idea was rather simple - for Sam to give suggestions on how to do a children's exhibition at the first major event to be organized by the Forum. Sam came on board immediately. The Forum, seeing opportunity in this collaboration, took the idea all the way towards establishing the Centres of Excellence.

A first phase of the project was completed at the end of last November. Sam Carter, Zera Karim and ECI graduate and Graphic Designer Patrick Gunn, along with representatives from the Forum, conducted six painting Workshops among school and street children from all walks of life. They met with Government officials, artists, and potential donors.

The first workshop was held on the very next day after the team's arrival in Addis, after a 30-hour flight. This was among hearing-impaired children. Five other workshops were organized in the course of the next three days, two with groups of street children. At each workshop art supplies generously donated by Opus Framing & Art Supplies and cameras donated by FujiCanada were distributed to the children. These were accompanied by a brief orientation on how to use brushes, mix colours, and tell painted stories, which could be anything: experiences they had in the past, ideas, feelings or thoughts they might have about people, their surrounding and everyday life.

Ten times the number of students subscribed to participate than places available. The privilege was just the possibility to use brushes and paints. At the street children workshops barely ten children (out of thirty) raised their hands when asked if they had used a paintbrush, yet within a few minutes they were experimenting with mixing colours and slapping on paint, overcoming their initial "background phobia." Each child provided a title and a brief story about their art. All were photographed with their paintings, and these images will be used to produce certificates to be presented to the children this month. Their work and information about the ACPF will be used in a traveling exhibition, for which a course is currently underway at ECI. The traveling exhibition will be easy to assemble and install according to simple instructions provided in a manual. A "bonus" item will be a photo exhibition by forty children (different from the artists) documenting a day in their life. FujiCanada donated the forty cameras to Sam Carter and the Forum for this purpose.

The Project Vision team will continue to work with ACPF on the Development of a programme for the establishment of the proposed centers of excellence. The African Child Policy Forum, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a knowledge-based policy and advocacy center committed to the promotion and realization of child rights and welfare in Africa. The work of the Forum is children-driven, inspired by universal values, and guided by global knowledge. The programme is anchored to four pillars: Knowledge; Advocacy; Policy Development; and Institution-building. The Forum promotes and disseminates information and knowledge on grass-roots work being carried out by child-rights organizations, provides an arena for dialogue on issues affecting children, carries out action-oriented empirical research, and interacts with children to prepare them to participate in the promotion and defense of their own rights.

Contributed by Vali Jamal, Senior Policy Advisor, ACPF
Co-author Sam Carter, Associate Professor, ECI