BuildaBridge Community Programs

Arts and culture are some of the most fundamental forms of self- and community-identification humans use to mold their identities and share their stories. Refugee populations are contributing to their new American communities through the arts as a means of sharing their cultures, histories, stories and above all, shaping their identities in a new environment.  BuildaBridge facilitates such efforts with refugees from over ten countries through the Refugee Project   - a multi-faceted program with memberships in two city-wide collaboratives designed to assist refugees, at all stages of resettlement in identifying adjustment strategies based on the strengths of their communities. The Refugee Project supports and facilitates art-making experiences for refugees as they pursue success, recovery, hope, healing and resiliency in a new culture. This June, during World Refugee Awareness Month, BuildaBridge launched its second season of arts programming for Nationalities Services Center's...

Mark, a refugee from Iraq, had been coming to the Mixed Adults creative arts therapy group at the Nationalities Services Center (NSC) for over two years as part of BuildaBridge's involvement with The Philadelphia Partnership for Resilience (PPR).  Sunday was the last group of the Spring Semester, and it also happened to be Mark's last group meeting for good.  “My case is closed here (at NSC),”  he announced, “So I won’t be coming again.”  There was disappointment all around.  He was the major translation help for the other Arabic-speaking group members, and he was the ‘senior statesman’ so to speak, for knowing how the group “went”, and for helping new members.  However, there also seemed to be a self-pride in his “graduation” from the NSC case management service. The group, led by BuildaBridge art therapist Rebecca Asch and drama artist Francesca Montanile, was finishing up the Altered Book project.  Sunday's prompt for the art-making was drawin...