Healing Through Hiphop

This 5-day program is meant to follow-up on the initial “Social Work Through HipHop” program where the concept of healing paths was introduced.

It has been the experience of BluePrintForLife that after our initial project in a community the youth are starting to trust again and many of them want to start the long journey of healing in their lives. It has also been our experience that our programs often win the trust of the parents and Elders in a community and we hope to leverage this by taking the healing process to the next level. This program strives to include all the local counselings support that exist in a community, whether this is through social workers, teachers, Elders or trusted parents.

Talking about the issues is a solid first step.

Healing is viewed as a core strength that will help prepare youth and young adults in taking back control of their lives and give them some insight into the things that may of happen to them and how they can learn positive ways of dealing with their emotions, anger and guilt. This program works with smaller groups to help facilitate honest and open discussion in a safe environment (30 youth in 3 groups of 10 that rotate through the weeks programming). Not only are healing circles used under the guidance of a counsellor with a Masters in Social Work degree, but emotions, stories of abuse and stories of healing are slowly nurtured throughout the week as the participants learn how to open up and support each other.

These themes and stories will be examined and put into poetry by working with some of Canada’s top street poets. Poetry and the delivering of it can be a strong emotional release and we will work towards these poems created by the youth being presented on the final night to the community. If time permits these poems can also be put to music, thereby creating their own songs.

We believe that healing takes place by getting people talking about ones issues. This is a scary thing to do when one has been hurt but it is clear that keeping secrets inside and holding back on ones emotions can lead to not only anger, depression and suicide, but also limits ones ability to trust people in their own personal relationships. We hope to start a process that helps people learn how to reach out for the support of others and for communities to also realize that they are all responsible for each other.