May 6th to 16th an Arts Aftercare team will be in Mexico City training six organizations in the use of our Healing Arts Toolkit: Fundación Reintegra Fundación Camino a Casa El Pozo de Vida Sin Trata Ministerios de Amor Casa de las Mercedes   We are grateful to El Redentor church who is co-hosting the training at their facilities, and covering the cost of meals and lodging for us. This trip will train about 40 staff from six organizations serving hundreds of survivors of sex trafficking and ...

Curtis and Grace were recently featured in an article in the Seattle Pacific University alumni magazine, Response. We are grateful for this chance to continue expanding the circle of who hears about the work we're up to! Head on over to Response and take a look!

As we've mentioned previously, Arts Aftercare had an amazing opportunity to be present at the recent Justice Conference in Philadelphia, PA. Curtis and Grace, along with their band Jubilee, made the most of it! Curtis and Grace, performing with Jubilee, shared the main stage with author and speaker Sheryl WuDunn.

Long-time dancer and human trafficking abolitionist Renee Yong is completing her Doctorate in Psychology and Counseling/PsyD from Northwest University.  She is writing her dissertation on the use of dance and movement therapy with human trafficking survivors.  Renee is partnering with Arts Aftercare to develop more dance and movement activities that can be used safely and effectively in our Healing Arts Toolkit.  She is also collaborating with other great folks like...

The Justice Conference is coming up in just a couple weeks in Philadelphia. We're excited to share that Curtis and Grace will be there as part of Jubilee, performing on the main stage in front of 7,000 attendees!  Arts Aftercare will also be participating in the Justice Conference film festival with our short documentary "Do What You Love to End What You Hate" about our trip to the Philippines.  If you can't make it to Philadelphia for the Justice Conference though, don't despair!...

With Curtis and Grace back from Mexico, we at Arts Aftercare are back hard at work here in Seattle. Curtis did take time to travel down to San Francisco though and speak at Freedom Summit 2013. We hope to have audio or video of that talk to share at some point, but in the mean time, you can check out his talk from Freedom Summit 2011.

We're having a fantastic trip exploring partnerships in Mexico, demonstrating our Healing Arts Toolkit. I've met with the directors and staff members of the only three safe homes in Mexico City dedicated to survivors of human trafficking - El Pozo de Vida, Fundacion Camino a Casa, and Reintegra.  All three of these groups are visibly excited and encouraged by our Healing Arts Toolkit, saying things like: "This is extremely impressive, and exactly what I've been looking for... how soon can y...

Greetings from chilly Seattle! We hope you have all settled in after the holidays. Here at Arts Aftercare we're already busily at work adding new partners.

Exciting news if you live in the Bay Area! Arts Aftercare co-founder Curtis Romjue will be leading a breakout session at Freedom Summit 2013. Curtis will be presenting The Artist and Slavery, discussing the role artists can play both in raising awareness of human trafficking, and bringing healing through art and music therapy in aftercare.  Other breakout sessions are being lead by well known speakers such as Justin Dillon (producer/director of Call + Response) and Brad Myles (Executive Dir...

Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays!  Even as we at Arts Aftercare are pausing to celebrate this season with our families, we are looking forward with excitement to the coming year.  We've mentioned before how your end of year giving to Arts Aftercare will help us move forward in the coming year. One of the ways we're excited to share about is expanding our partnerships into Latin America. Early next year, Curtis and Grace will be heading to Mexico City to meet with two ...

It's hard to think about the holiday season and not think about all the great music it inspires. This year, Arts Aftercare co-founders Curtis and Grace Romjue, performing as The Humble Bold, bring you a Christmas album of their own, with 100% of the proceeds going to Arts Aftercare. Head over to thehumblebold.bandcamp.com to take a listen and buy your copy.

  The end of the calendar year is an exciting time at non-profits like Arts Aftercare. It’s both a time focused on ending the year well, and looking forward with excitement to the coming year. This December finds us at Arts Aftercare giving thanks for the many lives that have been touched with color and hope, and budgeting for 2013 when we hope to reach more survivors of slavery than ever before.

Brent Egbert from Arts Aftercare on Vimeo. Brent Egbert was kind enough to share some of his music during our event at the Triple Door back in August. He also shared some of his experiences from volunteering with Arts Aftercare here in Seattle in our work with street youth.

You may have noticed a recent uptick in some of our sharing on Facebook, and if you haven't you will soon. This is because we have a new member on our social media team! Felicia Follum will be sharing news and stories on Facebook and here on the blog about art and music therapy, and how it is being used to help people recovering from traumatic experiences.

Exciting news this week! Arts Aftercare will be featured in a show on Community Channel UK! They will be showing the "Doing What You Love to Undo What You Hate" video Eric Becker made during our Philippines trip.

Our final video from our night at the Triple Door. Dr. Dan Allender speaks about the important role of art in trauma therapy.

This week brings Mike Hogan of IJM to talk about the work of IJM, and how Arts Aftercare helps them help victims of human trafficking. As always, please help us by sharing this video with your friends and family and spread the word about the work of Arts Aftercare! Mike Hogan (International Justice Mission) at Arts Aftercare's 2012 benefit "Beautiful Things" from Arts Aftercare on Vimeo.

It's taken us a bit, but we've finally got video up of Dean Hirsch, the first of our speakers from our night at the Triple Door. Have a look and listen as Dean talks about the unique mission of Arts Aftercare, and be sure to pass this along! Dean Hirsch (former President of World Vision) from Arts Aftercare on Vimeo.

Curtis and Jubilee recently spent some time at the University of Wyoming. They were invited to take part in a "Justice Week" being promoted by the school's International Justice Mission chapter. Curtis was able to present on the Healing Arts Toolkit, and Jubilee also performed for students.

In the last couple weeks, we've been working hard to get videos of the speakers online so that you can watch and share them with friends and family who weren't able to make it. Speaking of videos, the Eric Becker video embedded above is a great way to share the story of the work we are trying to do. One great (and easy!) way you can support us is by forwarding this video on to five members of your friends or family.

  First off, thank you! Our "Beautiful Things" benefit event at the Triple Door last Monday night was a huge success! We couldn't have done it without all who were there and all who were supporting us even if they couldn't make it.

Our Triple Door event "Beautiful Things" is just around the corner (you can still get tickets here!), but we want to let you know about exciting things that are in the works for after Monday night! The biggest news is that we have our first Indonesian partner, Compassion First. You all know by now about our trip to the Philippines earlier this year (and if you don't you should come to the Triple Door on Monday night, it's seriously going to be awesome!).

We're just over a week away now from our "Beautiful Things" event at the Triple Door! This week brings yet another special guest announcement though. We're excited to have Dean Hirsch, former President of World Vision International, join us on the 27th!

Another week and another exciting announcement about the 27th! We're happy to say Dr. Dan Allender--author, trauma therapist, and former President of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology--will be joining us at the Triple Door.

 Mike Hogan will be speaking at the Triple Door on the 27th as part of our special night. Mike is the Pacific Northwest Director of Church Mobilization for International Justice Mission. He will share about the work of IJM and how Arts Aftercare is partnering with them.

  This week Grace and Curtis sat down with Dean Hirsch - former International President of World Vision - who gave extremely positive feedback and constructive advice on next steps for launching our Healing Arts Toolkit on a larger scale. We continue to receive very encouraging responses to our programs, especially the uniqueness of our Healing Arts Toolkit. Exciting doors are opening for us.

This is it! This is a huge milestone in the life of Arts Aftercare. After 2 years in the making, we've created the first academically-researched, field-tested toolkit to bring the arts in a healing capacity to survivors of human trafficking.

Healing Arts Toolkit, Philippines from Arts Aftercare on Vimeo. The video slideshow above features photos taken by John Keatley during our trip to the Philippines this past March where we trained 24 staff from six organizations in the use of our Healing Arts Toolkit. The slideshow contains portraits of some of the heroic women who have escaped from sexual exploitation and slavery in the Philippines, who are now going through the aftercare process.

We have two exciting bits of news to share with you today, a new volunteer on our staff and a generous donation that's going to really help in our work.  First is April Trabucco, who has recently joined our staff as a grant writer. She has past experience writing grants for arts organizations down in California.

We are happy to say we are about halfway through editing the film footage from our recent trip to the Philippines. We are excited to soon share with you--and the world--a short documentary film telling the story of the realities of human trafficking, the healing process of aftercare and the importance of the arts in the recovery process. We are privileged to be working with film maker Eric Becker of We Are Shouting on this project.

You may have seen last week on Facebook and Twitter that we posted links to an article in an Albuquerque newspaper about New Mexico politician Michael Wiener (The Weekly Alibi). Wiener asked John Keatley to take his photo while he posed on Walking Street in Angeles City with a group of “bar girls” during our trip to the Philippines. The photo became a major problem for Wiener after he returned to the US and began a campaign for re-election tothe Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners.

Have you looked at our partner and consultant pages lately? We've been hard at work making sure they are up to date so you can see who it is we are involved with.  We've had the honor of working with talented therapists, artists and justice workers. We've also had the great fortune to work with some amazing partner organizations.  Head on over to our "Learn" page to read more about both.  The other thing we wanted to bring to your attention today is a video that's been circulating...

Greetings friends! We wanted to take some time today and update you on Arts Aftercare's work in the Philippines. As you know from the last update, Curtis, Grace and Lacie travelled to the Philippines earlier this year to pilot our Healing Arts Toolkit with 24 people representing six partner organizations (IJM Manila & Cebu, Preda Foundation, Samaritana Transformation Ministries [who co-hosted the original trip], Renew Foundation, and YWAM Olongapo).

  You probably remember back at the beginning of March that Curtis, Grace and Lacie went to the Philippines to debut the Arts Aftercare "Healing Arts Toolkit." But did you know they were accompanied on the trip by film maker Eric Becker and photographer John Keatley? Eric Becker has been working for 6 years in documentary film making. He is debuting his film Honor the Treaties this year at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Greetings! As promised, here is out weekly update as to the comings and goings here at Arts Aftercare. Curtis, Grace and Lacie met this last week with a group of four delegates from Poland who were interested in learning more about human trafficking aftercare.

Greetings! Let me take a moment to introduce myself before diving into some exciting news. My name is Jonathan Assink and I have been involved for a while now with Arts Aftercare taking on a variety of tasks.

Whirlwind. A metaphor people use to describe days or weeks that fly by in a blur of busyness and chaos. It's how I could describe the past week.

Welcome to the new ArtsAftercare.org website!  We won this site build from Radium 3 thanks to the many supporters who voted for us in their national contest.  A big "THANK YOU" to all who voted, and to Radium 3 for the great job they've done! This blog will be a place for you to keep up to speed on recent news and developments.  Also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Love creatively, and keep in touch!