My Nonprofit Reviews

As a teacher with experience working with students at Title I schools and as someone who has both worked with and seen the educators at Hope Stone in action, I find it difficult to express how meaningful their mission is for those they serve whether children in both public and charter schools, veterans and senior citizens. They provide a creative outlet for veterans to express their experiences in the military whether in active combat or in support of troops in combat. They provide multigenerational classes in dance and in theatre for young adults and for seniors to learn from one another's experiences and to find common ground and unique forms of expression. They also serve children in public schools, notably those whose populations are at-risk and underserved. In so doing, they provide these children not only with an arts education taught by professionals in the fields and at a time in which the arts struggle to receive funding in many Houston-area school districts, but, though the arts, they enable these young men and women to learn self-discipline and productive outlets for expressing emotion as well as improving their abilities to work as part of a group with others of different backgrounds and learning styles. They also learn to communicate clearly and to work mindfully and are provided with strategies and the means to process their emotions and to reduce stress, skills that are not only invaluable to school-aged children regularly assessed on the material they learn in their core classes but also to the young men and women they will grow to become.