Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc.

Our goals include continuing to serve the community through our existing programs as well as expanding and launching new curriculum for various programs to serve diverse populations of suffering individuals. A few of our selected goals for the next 3 years include the following: Expand “Art4Healing® Raging Colors: Expressive Painting for Teens" Program for suffering teens that are experiencing bullying, exposure to drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, teen pregnancy, depression, and low self-esteem. In addition, we are launching a new Anti-Bullying 4-week series specifically designed for our "Raging Colors: Expressive Painting for Teens" program. This new curriculum allows the students to expand upon his or her experiences with bullying, kindness, and empathy. Expand our “Healing for Heroes and their Families" Program by offering more workshops to our returning veterans and their families to facilitate more workshops in North Orange and Los Angeles Counties. Expand our “Art4Healing®: Out of the Darkness: Women Survivors" Program by offering more workshops to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking in partnership with Human Option, CSP Inc.—Waymakers, and others agencies. Expand “Vintage Colors: Art4Healing Over 60" Program for the underserved, low-income senior population of Orange County living with the challenges of aging, including loneliness, grief, stress, fear, economic hardship or illness. We are expanding to North Orange County. Expand our “Visiting Art Angel Bedside" Program by offering three-times weekly one-on-one bedside art sessions for children in long-term care at Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) and now also, Southern California Hospice Foundation for patients & family members. Expand our “Creative Tools for Homeless Children & Their Families" Program by weekly workshops for homeless children and their families in partnership with Project Hope Alliance, American Family Housing Shelter for the Homeless, The Illumination Foundation, Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, and the OC Rescue Mission.

The Art4Healing® method is a creative process that encourages emotional healing. Individuals do not need a background in art or come from an artistic background to participate—we continually encourage those who have never painted to experience a workshop. Due to the accessibility of the Art4Healing® Method, we are not limited to one specific demographic or location and this allows our non-profit to serve more people in our community. Through building community partnerships with hospitals, non-profit organizations, city programming agencies, and other partner agencies, we are able to collaborate with various sites and serve various demographics with our Art4Healing® Method. For example, we serve homeless children and their families, at-risk youth, active military members, and more populations. Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc.'s programs are funded through foundation grants, corporate grants and sponsorships, individual donations and fundraising, and our social enterprise of training and certifying Art4Healing® Facilitators in the Art4Healing® Method. Our social enterprise of certifying members of the larger community, and internationally (through our new Art4Healing International Certificate program), we are able to ensure future funding for our programs. With these funds, Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc. is able to train and contract 18 Art4Healing® Facilitators to lead 40-50 Art4Healing® workshops in Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties monthly. Through these workshops, we serve over 4,000 children and adults annually. We also have over 100 volunteers that assist during our Annual Palette of Colors Dinner & Auction Gala, as office helpers, assist our Facilitators during various partner agency workshops, and other events. Our HeARTs for Healing Women's Guild are members of the community who volunteer their time to be advocates for Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc. These women specifically help with fundraising events, such as our Palette of Colors Gala, and our Annual Healing Art Box Giveaway where we give out over 1,200 shoeboxes filled with 10 new art supplies to homeless children and children of the deployed in San Onofre School on Marine Base Camp Pendleton.

At the end of each workshop, participants complete written surveys regarding the extent to which creating art helped them to identify, process, and express their feelings in a constructive way. These workshop questionnaires are entered into an online survey system and when sufficient data is compiled, we contract a third-party research firm to quantify the program results into outcome reports. <br/><br/>Based on data collected from 2,476 Art4Healing® workshop participants, we completed Outcome Reports for 6 of our core programs that serve homeless and economically disadvantaged families, seniors, teens, victims of domestic violence, active duty marines, veterans, and their families, and autistic children. Needless to say, we are thrilled with the results and excited to share the Reports KEY FINDINGS (% represent outcome averages from 6 reports). We have not collected sufficient data for the "Raging Colors: Expressive Art for Teens" program, however the outcomes from our other programs give some indication on their success and impact. <br/><br/>87% Participants that would like to take another Art4Healing® workshop.<br/>85%Participants that strongly agreed that they would refer a friend or family member to an Art4Healing® workshop.<br/>87% Participants that strongly agreed that they felt better after a workshop.<br/>83% Participants that strongly agreed that the workshop helped them express their emotions and feelings.

Since 2000, Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc. has offered Art4Healing® therapeutic workshops free of charge to over 35 hospitals, military facilities, community organizations, and partner non-profits where children and their families can give pain a voice and meaning through expressive abstract painting workshops. To date, we have facilitated Art4Healing® workshops to more than 70,000 children and adults suffering from pain, grief, fear or stress. For the past 8 years, Art & Creativity for Healing, Inc. has impacted 1000 children annually through our “Healing Art Box Giveaway" to underprivileged children in Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties, in addition to the children of the deployed on Marine Base Camp Pendleton. (Each “Healing Art Boxes" contains 10 new art supplies valued at $20 per box) To date, we have given away over 9,000 Healing Art Boxes to children in need. In 2018, we launched a new Art4Healing® International Certificate Program and offered our Art4Healing® training on a worldwide and web-based platform. From New Zealand to Cyprus and back to the United States, we are able to reach new and different demographics of individuals through this new program. In 2020 we added Art4Healing LIVE workshops and classes to expand our reach with our unique methodology.