See Beautiful Grant Applicant: drawchange

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

Empowering kids through art

Drawchange is a nonprofit organization that conducts art therapy-based programming with homeless children in Atlanta and around the world. Our founder and CEO, Jennie Lobato, established drawchange in 2009 from her passion for art, children, and helping others. Those passions inspire our mission to end the cycle of poverty through the life-changing beauty of creating art.

After 10 years in operation, we have programs in Atlanta, Orlando, Kentucky, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, and more! We have served over 10,000 children and continue to multiply that reach each year with the drawchange Blueprint. The Blueprint is a comprehensive online tool that grants individuals the ability to adopt and implement the drawchange curriculum in their very own communities. These extensions of drawchange ensure our organization’s reach is not limited by physical location and is sustainable for years to come. We are dedicated to opening young minds to their true potential so they can see the beautiful they can become.

Drawchange creates ongoing programs in homeless shelters to conduct breathing exercises, imagination sessions, and art-therapy based projects primarily with children ages 5-10. We see beautiful as we watch art ignite a passion for learning and living within homeless children. Through each and every smile, we witness children in extreme situations expand and learn to envision a better world for themselves and their community. 

Children leave our programs inspired to become who they want to be in life, with pride, boosted self-esteem and a deeper connection to their emotions and the world around them.  Everyday we strive to achieve our ultimate goal: to instill confidence and build self-esteem in children through art therapy-based programming at local homeless shelters and in communities abroad.

A drawchange participant is simply always a member of the drawchange family. We all share a common commitment to the “drawchange way of living”--a way of knowing we can be anything we want to be in life and of being empowered to become a leader within our own community. And most importantly we all share a knowledge that no one is a victim of their current circumstances and can always rise from anything!

Studies show that exposing children to art helps increase test scores and provides a zest for learning. Homeless children are at great risk of missing school and achieving lower scores in comparison to their peers. When we enter the homeless shelters we create an environment that enables the children to feel safe while expressing themselves and feeling valued. 
Our programs allow children a place to freely explore their emotions and process everything that is going on instead of feeling like a victim of their circumstance. Programs of therapeutic value are often not an option to children experiencing homelessness and drawchange makes that option available.

Through self-empowerment and self-confidence provided by drawchange, children improve their emotional intelligence and learn that even when they cannot control the world around them, they can control their actions. We are breaking the cycle of poverty as we work on seeing beautiful together as a global community. 

Submitted by: Jennie Lobato

CEO and Founder, drawchange