Charles Desantis

Smart, Beautiful and Important: Teaching Art to Aids-affected Orphans in Africa's Largest Slum Charles Desantis

In the slums of Nairobi, artist and volunteer Charles DeSantis chronicles the creation and implementation of an art immersion program, and shows how educating children to have another voice allows them to be heard. In 2006, author Charles DeSantis was selected with 11 other Georgetown University faculty members to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, as part of a program called the Kenya Immersion Group. Once there, DeSantis and the others visited many aspects of the Kenyan culture, confronting the perils of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and the challenges of mixed tribal cultures living within one region. While in Nairobi, DeSantis visited a Jesuit school for AIDS orphans, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, located in Kibera, the largest slum on the African continent. In just one square mile, Kibera is home to more than one million people. At St. Al's, DeSantis and Associate Dean Margaret Halpin both realized that the children living in such abject poverty had no form of art curriculum whatsoever at their school. After inquiring with the administration about the desire for such a program, DeSantis and Halpin received encouragement, and so spent the next year developing an Art Immersion program to be delivered over a two-week period and piloted in 2008. The program was a huge success, and DeSantis was asked to return again in 2009 and 2010, implementing updated phases of the program. He also plans to create the means by which the program can be offered annually for Kibera students. This book chronicles the path of the Art Immersion program and its incredible impact on some of the most impoverished children of Kenya. Its contents is drawn on the blogs DeSantis kept in 2008 and 2009: http://artinkibera2008.blogspot.com/