Haiti Matching Grant

IPDC will travel to Haiti in July! A team of dancers, musicians, a medical doctor and an elementary school teacher will work with children devastated by the recent earthquake. IPDC was contacted by L’Universite Chretienne du Nord d’Haiti because of the organization’s previous work in New Orleans and Philadelphia. UCNH is located in Limbe, a town that has become a refuge for families and children from Port au Prince. UCNH specifically requested that Indigenous Pitch Dance Collective work with the displaced children because of the organization’s history in both trauma recovery and the arts.
Please consider making a generous gift to IPDC to support these vital, creative outlets for children. We have received a matching grant from the company Versabar for our Haiti mission! They will match up to $10,000! Versabar has been witness to our life-changing work in New Orleans. They were inspired to support our expansion because of the joy, purpose and creativity they have seen our programs bring to children. Please consider sponsoring a child for $300 or $40 for our 4 years of service. Any gift that you make to our Haiti program will be, in effect, doubled!
This camp will feature hip-hop, ballet, modern and even swing dance! Most importantly, however, we will work with the children to find their own expressive movement. As our name suggests, we focus on the native culture of the people we serve. While we are teaching the skills of technique, the children are bringing their own movement vocabulary to teach us! These cultural learning opportunities give children a sense of pride in themselves and their community. They learn to express themselves in a healthy, creative way.
The CIA World FactBook reports “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty.” Those figures were before the earthquake, and those percentages are expected to increase in the economic aftermath. IPDC will be working with children who have very little. But, that is part of our mission. Being an artist is, essentially, creating something out of nothing. A dancer has just her body. A musician has an odd combination of wood and metal. A writer starts with a blank piece of paper, the sculptor with a block of clay. The artist in each views the emptiness and oddness and sees inspiration and potential-- their dreams, waiting to be realized.
IPDC believes every child deserves the opportunity to share his/her story. We use play as a means to explore, express and find hope in frightening times. While working with IPDC, students learn that their artistic voices deserve to be heard. Through this unique creative exchange, they gain self-confidence, a major accomplishment given their adverse living situations. Children each have a story to tell and Indigenous Pitch Dance Collective teaches them the creative skills necessary to make their voices heard.