Sing for Hope's Education program harnesses the transformative power of the arts to foster positive change and growth among young people, educators, and communities. Through engaging arts classes, workshops, and a curriculum aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the program cultivates a creative and service-oriented approach to learning and activism.
Launched in 2020, the HandaHarmony Sing for Hope Global Youth Initiative leverages youth creativity to drive the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, in alignment with The United Nations Decade of Action. This program is made possible by a transformational 10-year grant to Sing for Hope by The International Foundation for Arts and Culture (Dr. Haruhisa Handa, Sing for Hope Global Patron). HandaHarmony’s flagship annual event is The United Nations High-Level Political Forum, a destination event for our students and an international symbol of youth arts empowerment. In addition to the UN HLPF, HandaHarmony features additional UN creative service learning events in partnership with UN Women, UNICEF House, etc.
Sing for Hope’s in-school and after-school classes are designed to inspire, educate, and transform students, teachers, and communities through our dynamic creative-service-learning approach. Classes are offered in a variety of disciplines, levels, and languages, in reflection of our partner communities’ culture and needs.
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The Sing for Hope Youth Chorus is Sing for Hope’s musical ensemble that provides creative service learning through rehearsal and performance for children and youth ages 8-18 via an innovative multi-age model. At once global and hyperlocal, The Sing for Hope Youth Chorus is our pride and joy, currently centering a core group made up of young singers from across the New York Metropolitan area. Performing subset groups include Girls’ Chorus, Gospel Choir, and more.
Sing for Hope offers a host of activations and productions including Pauline García Viardot’s 1867 “eco-feminist opera” The Last Sorcerer (centering SDGs 5 and 13), Cabaret Weimar: The Wanderer, our CDC Foundation-funded vaccine confidence musical Don’t Throw Away Your Shot!, and more.
Launched during the pandemic in response to the reported isolation and disengagement experienced by high school students, Sing for Hope’s Careers in the Arts series is an online resource that brings students directly into conversation with arts leaders via Zoom. Focusing on a variety of creative industry paths, Careers in the Arts guests have included Rwandan women’s drumming ensemble Ingoma Nshya, Broadway star Kimberly Marable, the production team of The Drew Barrymore Show, and other leading creative practitioners. The program has reached over 2,000 students (the majority of them Title I and/or from under-resourced schools) and has employed artists across a broad range of creative disciplines including music, theater, television production, visual art, stage management, and lighting design. In FY23, the program expanded internationally to serve Sing for Hope students at Shanti Bhavan in India. Sing for Hope’s Paul Foundation Young Artist Resource Lab: Careers in the Arts Series is made possible by a generous multi-year grant from The Beatrice and Reymont Paul Foundation.
Designed to foster dialogue and encourage positive social change through the arts, Artivism: The Power of Art for Social Transformation, co-founded and co-produced by Argie Agelarakis and Carolina Cambronero Varela in the Spring of 2021, is an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration between Adelphi University, The Gottesman Libraries of Teachers College | Columbia University, and Sing for Hope. With weekly multi-modal events offered free of charge and open to all, Artivism presents diverse artists, activists, academics, and creative practitioners from around the world in conversations, workshops, and performances that center on how the arts transform lives and environments hyperlocally, citywide, nationally, and globally.
"Sing for Hope has given me a safe place to go every day where I am free to express myself emotionally, mentally and physically. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am today: a leader in my community with my eyes set on college."
Sing for Hope is an approved NYC DOE vendor
