Welcome to The HALO Learning Center blog. I am very excited to begin this blog and get to share what happens at The Center with you.
The HALO Learning Center is supported by The HALO Foundation, which is an incredible organization. As many of you know, I have been looking for quite some time for an organization whose mission is similar to mine: to give my life helping the world’s orphaned and at-risk youth. I believe that every human being has a right and deserves, absolutely, the basics of life: food, water, shelter, clothing, access to education, love and support, the right tools to make solid decisions for life. In particular, our children. And when I say our, I mean every child on this Earth. I don’t believe in geographical boundaries separating our responsibility to take care of each other. We all are here, we are all the same, and we all deserve the same opportunity to make out of our lives what we wish.
Last fall, I was babysitting for a family whose children I watched at the day care that I was working for. While I was in their home, their mother asked me about myself, what I do and what I want to do. I expressed to her that I want to work with at-risk youth and orphanages. She immediately responded, “You should check out the organization my friend Rebecca started, HALO.” And that I did.
HALO’s mission: The HALO Foundation is committed to enhancing the living conditions and providing art therapy for orphans worldwide. HALO provides American youth with opportunities to learn philanthropy and volunteerism by seeing the world through the eyes of the less fortunate.
“HALO was founded in Kansas City in June 2005. The first HALO event was created by a group of martial arts students at Kids2Leaders in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. They raised over $5,000 for an orphanage in Mexico, and the next event they put on with other area Kansas City schools raised $40,000. This event and others made it possible for us to grow from supporting education for an orphanage in Mexico to” what it is today.
Today HALO supports over 500 orphaned children in Kenya, Uganda, Nicaragua, Mexico and India. HALO provides food, water, shelter, clothing, education, art therapy, caretakers, medical services and vocational training to orphans and at-risk children worldwide.
HALO has five offices through out the United States: Denver, Jefferson City, Nashville, Edmond, and its headquarters are in Kansas City. These different sites each do separate fundraisers and event to raise money for the orphanage(s) they are paired with. HALO’s Denver and Kansas City sites both support local at-risk youth through art therapy and life-skills workshops at The HALO Learning Center in Kansas City and The HALO Center for Youth in Denver.
Immediately upon learning of HALO, I had to get involved. I attended a volunteer meeting last spring, learned more about the organization and was waiting for the perfect opportunity for me to get involved, which came about this summer.
HALO reaches out to international youth in-need, as well as, American at-risk youth. For some years now, HALO ambassadors have gone out into our community and offered art services to Kansas City’s youth, particularly reStart, Inc. and Niles Home for Children. HALO recently opened The HALO Learning Center here in Kansas City. And this is where I come in :)
My purpose is to help the center grow. I recruit area artists and educators to come in and host art or life-skills workshops. These workshops are sometimes a one-hour one time course, sometimes they are a three-four week session for one-hour each week. Take a look at our website and click on the Calendar link to view up-coming scheduled workshops: http://www.haloworldwide.org/halo-homes/kc-mo/
The other part of my internship is to partner with youth homes, homeless shelters, urban youth programs, schools, etc. to reach out to Kansas City’s at-risk youth. The workshops are created to help these youth enhance self-confidence and self-expression, encourage development of skills, and help HALO kids set achievable positive future goals. I have personally worked before with some of Kansas City’s at-risk youth and am soooooooooo excited to get to reach out to them through art. It is incredible what a difference you can make in a child’s day when you give them the opportunity to use their hands, to use their minds, to create, explore, learn and grow! I am so excited to begin this beautiful journey at The Center.
This blog will be my testament of the goings on at The Center. Please share with me, learn with me, grow with me, celebrate with me and our kids!
