In association with the Institute for Service Learning, Our Next Generation remains connected with partnerships. One of these partnerships is about creating a community through the arts. Our Next Generation received a $10,000 grant to partner with Express Yourself Milwaukee. The arts partnership takes notion through visual art, music, movement, dance and poetry. Through visual means of expression students are able to form a self-identity. For some children this is all they have to relate to. For these kids this is they’re neighborhood and they will represent it.
Around the community you can find graffiti, in the summer you will find dance, and in the speakers you can hear music. Kids are supporting this means of self-expression. It can save lives and keep young teens off the streets. Through the art form the youth learn the importance of community. I feel I have learned that not everything can be taught in school, and often it’s hard for kids to relate to those subjects when the community as a whole is cannot. So they relate to the streets or the way that they’re older brother, uncle, or even father had acted. As public school students they may learn from they’re teachers but can become through they’re art form. Which is why I strongly believe in building a strong foundation within the arts.
Along with the art form it is important not to forget about the ones that may not easily be able to find meaning through self-expression. I think that enabling anything as limitless would be ideal but difficult to compose. Providing access to easy transportation, living-wage jobs, and to neighborhood groups such as Our Next Generation can help this spectrum of an economically declined community. It seems that when financial institutions become partnered in a leadership role within the community its sends a powerful message to the youth, potentially binding stronger resourced partners to the table.
I learned that through encouragement and inspiration, surrounding yourself with other people of higher intellect could really change the way we perceive ourselves to be. Which is what Our Next Generation is doing with The Institute for Service Learning. Interaction from young volunteers and college student’s help the youth relate to something on an age and interest level. Seemingly, here is where those doors will open and strengthen tomorrow’s generation.