Through music, poetry, and art, it has become possible for children and young people to express what is on their minds in ways that create awareness and engage people who would not otherwise be interested in development work.
For many years, we have worked to use creative forms of expression to create awareness and change attitudes in Kenya and Ghana. Among other things, we have written poems with street children and young girls in Ghana and combined them with poems written by Danish young people in a collection of poems. In another project, street children have written a rap song with a desire to change society's view of them.
Creative writing is a vehicle for independent thinking and an alternative to memorisation because it allows young people to express themselves. We have used creative writing in our projects that rethink how creative writing and development work can work together. It started with the publication of a poetry collection - Poetic Empowerment - in 2017, which is a product of the platform we created for young street children and marginalised girls in Ghana to share their experiences and exchange them with their peers from two Danish schools in Randers.
We have transferred these positive experiences with creative tools to other projects that connect the children and young people we work with in the South with the Danish population in completely new ways.
You can read more about our projects with creative expressions below.
