See Beautiful Grant Applicant: CoachArt

The feature below is brought to you by CoachArt, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here.
 
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.

Creating beautiful in the face of adversity

Charlotte, age 14, was born two months prematurely and diagnosed with periventricular leukomalacia. This condition involves the death of small areas of brain tissue, which affected her motor control. As a toddler, Charlotte needed physical therapy and assistance to sit up, roll over, and crawl.

Seeking a way for Charlotte to live a fuller life, her parents enrolled her with CoachArt when she was 8 years old. CoachArt enabled Charlotte to try a range of inclusive arts and athletics activities she couldn’t participate in elsewhere. Because CoachArt sports are ADA-friendly, Charlotte was able to use her walker while playing soccer, baseball, and basketball with other children on a team.

“A lot of kids don’t feel like they can do things because of their limitations, but I tell them that CoachArt is incredibly supportive and they will help you do the things that you never thought you would do,” Charlotte told us. “CoachArt has challenged me. They have inspired me to take up things that I would have never taken up in the first place.”

CoachArt’s mission is to create a transformative arts and athletics community for families impacted by childhood chronic illness. Due to frequent hospital visits, deficient immune systems, and physical challenges, children with chronic illness often miss school and feel isolated. Families, overwhelmed by the cost and demands of ongoing medical care, lack the resources to afford extracurricular activities. While in the hospital, children can participate in art therapy programs, but lose access when they move to outpatient care despite being at an increased risk of mental health challenges. Rates of depression among chronically ill children are 5 to 7 times higher than their peers.

CoachArt programs create beautiful in the face of adversity by reducing stress, restoring fun, building self-confidence, igniting passion, and connecting families to a supportive community.

CoachArt’s model is to match caring adult volunteers who have a skill with children (ages 5 - 18) who want to learn or improve that skill, in groups or one-on-one. Group lessons, or “clubs,” typically meet once a week for about a month. One-on-one lessons involve eight weekly hour-long meetings, after which the volunteer coach and the child can renew for another series of lessons. CoachArt provides the volunteer coaches and the families with any materials the lessons require, so there’s no cost to participants. Our programs improve the social and emotional wellness of our students, while features like our online podcast The UpBeat provide parents with resources and inspirational anecdotes on their journey.

Many students become power-users, like Charlotte who has completed 204 lesson hours in various activities, and has discovered a passion for voice and theatre arts.

Charlotte’s mom told us, “CoachArt never ceases to amaze me, how they can make all sorts of activities accessible to kids. They’ve really created a unique solution to a problem that I think most people don’t know exists.”

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, CoachArt was aware that families impacted by chronic illness would have to adhere to strict shelter-in-place guidelines due to their greater vulnerability. As a result, their children needed accessible extracurricular activities more than ever, with the role of “play” becoming all the more important in decreasing stress, fatigue, and depression—and in cultivating community and fostering belonging.

On March 25 of 2020, CoachArt launched interactive online programming models to serve our community and keep kids connected: 1-on-1 and group lessons via Zoom video-conferencing, and Facebook Live tutorials. Lessons included arts and crafts, painting, drawing, music, cooking, acting, coding, martial arts, yoga, creative writing, and more.

The response to online programming was positive. 96% of parents reported that online lessons were engaging for their child, and 87% of parents expressed an interest in continuing online programming after COVID-19 safety guidelines are lifted—underlying the need for including accessible, online lessons moving forward.

One parent, overwhelmed with joy, told us, “CoachArt is doing more than just teaching. [The organization is providing] warmth, comfort, and structure during a scary and uncertain time.”

With prior geographic barriers now removed, CoachArt officially started serving chronically ill kids and their siblings outside of California in 2020. Our team organized free virtual summer camp programs not only in our traditional services areas of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area, but also in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, New York City, and Portland. The five-day virtual summer camps featured a different 1-hour arts or athletics activity each day, with all materials provided at no cost to participants.

CoachArt promotes volunteerism and advocates for arts and athletics education for every child impacted by chronic illness, regardless of physical limitations or socioeconomic background. As CoachArt serves nine locations across the U.S. and continues to expand nationally, our transformative community will make each city we serve more inclusive of disability and difference, while creating a skillshare network that inspires chronically ill children to see the beauty in themselves and their capabilities.

A society is more harmonious when all children thrive. CoachArt restores happiness from stress, hope from fear, and confidence from self-doubt for over 1,400 students and continues to grow. Thanks to the ongoing success of online programming, CoachArt plans to offer online programming to ANY child impacted by chronic illness in ANY city nationwide in 2021.

Our vision is that every family impacted by childhood chronic illness will be connected to a community of support and an opportunity to learn and grow together.

Submitted by Colton Alexio

Associate Development Director, CoachArt