Project Elimu is home to Kibera ballet dancers. We work with children living in informal settlements where we conduct weekly after-school clubs with 25 schools and 413 children overall. We do Arts and tech Education e.g. ballet, creative writing, digital literacy etc. Children living in informal settlements have limited access to arts education and many basic needs and are often victims of marginalization. Project Elimu has given these children tools of expression through Arts and tech.
We currently have an after school center in Kibera that children come for dance and gymnastic classes. The space is an earthen floor covered with a paper carpet. It is not fit enough for our dancers because it's easy to get injured while dancing on a hard surface and it's also hard to jump and run about freely. A poor floor can be a contributory cause of injury through falls. To prevent our ballet dancers from dancing on a hard surface, it is imperative for Project Elimu to build a dance floor.
A standard dance floor will protect our dancers from injury, fatigue, soreness and protect their overall health and well being. With good flooring our dancers will be in the safest situation possible. A good dance floor is important for the overall health and safety of our ballet dances and dance trainers. The project is likely to increase the number of students attending the dance classes due to the environment-friendliness, comfort, safety and attractiveness of the dance floor.
A proper dance floor is a privilege to these children because they consider Project Elimu's center as their safe space and they will own it. Proper and well-built dance floors can be long lasting thus more children will be able to train and rehearse dancing on the space. Our Arts Programs specifically ballet dance, are enticing to the children because our programs give them hope for a better future and it makes them see life beyond poverty, which unfortunately is what they interact with daily.
