Nationwide training program promotes confidence, positivity in youngsters
It may take a village “to bring up a child to be their best self,” but educator Emi Gittleman and her team at Get Empowered are ready for the task.
The organization – which expresses the African saying, “It takes a village to raise a child” – works to empower children in various communities across the country through arts and education.
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The idea came up about six years ago after Gittleman – who has been an educator for over two decades – saw her students struggle with learning and even with “just the everyday challenges of childhood and growing up,” she said Fox News.
Gittleman wanted to “bring more positivity into people’s lives”. So she started bringing music, dance, art, and environmental activities into the classroom.
“It lit up the kids,” she said. “That led to this initiative that we started a project called Get Empowered.”
Children take part in a Get Empowered program.
(Get empowered)
With Get Empowered, Gittleman and her team design bespoke programs to “harness the strengths and potential of each participant through a range of stimulating and engaging arts-based educational experiences that positively highlight diversity and inclusion,” according to the organization’s website.
Programs could include drumming, dancing, Brazilian capoeira, martial arts, or storytelling, she said.
To start the organization, Gittleman enlisted the help of a businessman who had two children with special needs.
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“He kept saying that he was so sad that his children and family were struggling to find things that would help them feel more confident, confident and successful,” she said. “You just didn’t find it.”
Now Get Empowered is bringing its programs to a range of settings “to help as many children as possible” from schools or home schooling to community centers, children’s hospitals, homeless shelters and summer camps across the country.
Children take part in a Get Empowered program.
(Get empowered)
“Everyone in the room engages in a highly dynamic, interactive way to learn from one another and to feed on one another and create something together,” said Gittleman.
Each program has the same goal: to ensure that “everyone feels welcomed and included in some way, shape, or form”.
Get Empowered also holds workshops for adults to help parents build their children’s confidence, both in and out of the classroom.
For Gittleman, empowerment is simply “the gift that passes on in life”.
