Love Foundation’s Unique Approach to Conflict Resolution Among Broken Families

Deborah Sewell

Among the seven grant recipients is the Love Foundation.  Through its Summer Arts Academy and After School Program, the initiative aims to break the communication barrier between children and parents who are incarcerated through visual and expressive arts, as well as media.  According to Deborah Sewell, it’s a unique concept, one that is being introduced to Belize for the first time.

Deborah Sewell, The Love Foundation

“When someone is incarcerated it affects children, it affects the entire family so, you know, this is a unique initiative for Belize but it’s something that I’ve been doing for a lot of years and it’s always been a dream of mine to bring this to Belize.  So, in speaking with Mr. John Woods and the people up at Kolbe and meeting with families up at Kolbe and going there especially during visiting days, you really see the uncomfortability between parents and children.  So, you know, there really isn’t a lot of communication, there’s a lot of hugs but there’s not a lot of communication.  So when this initiative came up, when this opportunity came up to write a proposal that would actually help children to really get an opportunity to communicate in their own way with their parents.  So this initiative, we’re calling it a media arts academy.  So, one it’s teaching children behind the scenes of the media industry so they’re actually going to be producing pieces of art and they’re going to be learning how to do the whole production process.  They’re going to learn how to record, they’re going to learn how to sketch, how to draw, how to take photography, you know, how to mix the photography with different aspects of media arts.  So once they produce their pieces that piece will speak and they go through reflective writing, narrative writing so they express themselves and how they feel about their situation and then that piece of art will go to the parent and then the parent will be able to develop their piece of art.  So that communication comes around the art piece. You know, why did you draw this?  What were you thinking when you drew this?”