Barbados Today

Social awareness via the arts is one thing which is often overlooked in many circles, but the HIV/AIDS Commission made an impact through the craft of young artists at a recent camp.

The one-week camp, which went by the name of Social Awareness in the Community Via the Arts, mainly focussed on the visual arts using various recycled materials.

At today’s closing ceremony, Community Development Aide of the Ivy Community, Colin Harewood, said that the 50 children they selected for the camp were very interested in the arts and did an excellent job in putting the materials together for the showcase.

“I must thank the trainer Leandro Soto for doing a great job with the trainers who had to come in and show the children how to do the art. Within a short space of time I think they did pretty well.

“Programmes like this should not only take place in the Ivy because I feel that kids do not always have the educational ability but when you could showcase your artistic skills or draw your feelings instead of writing them that is a little bit more dynamic,” he said.

Harewood said that although he has great aspirations for the camp, one of the challenges which arose was finances which played a major part in the success of any such venture.

“As long as we get the funding we will be good, but we cannot do these programmes in a vacuum and by that I mean that we cannot bring kids to do one programme and then when the programme is done the kids go their way and then we do not get them back… I think the whole thing too is to form a core group where we can teach them certain skills, developing their mobility as they go on in life,” Harewood stated.

Chairperson of the HIV/AIDS Education Committee and one of the camp organisers, Cheryl Harewood, said she expected the children from the Ivy community to produce a lot of good work during the camp and that is exactly what she saw in the results.

“We had our challenges but all in all it was successful because Community Development, which is the umbrella body in charge of the whole programme, worked with the Ivy HIV/AIDS Committee and everything worked quite well,” she said.

Harewood added that the level of enthusiasm of campers was extremely high and the idea of staging other camps was there.