Background – Awards – Accomplishments

  “If we try to see something positive in everything we do, life won’t necessarily become easier but it becomes more valuable”

Background:

For nineteen years as a nonprofit, TWW Inc’s mission highlights the impact of culture, traditional art-making, and history. In the past, TWW partnered with Children’s Aid Society, TASC, Beacon, and the Queens Library. These objectives are expressed within the communities and its intertwining relationships in the Latin American, Native American, Caribbean, American, and African communities. Communities served by TWW Inc. primarily are the under-served communities of East New York, Brownsville, and Bedford Stuyvesant, as well as neighborhoods in the Bronx. Work has also been done in Canada. Through the work of professional and international teaching artists, The Trails is a unique learning approach to how these cultures created paths that led to their shared American experience.

  • Served over 6,000 in class students.
  • Provided jobs and professional development training for 100 artists and teachers
  • Initial themes entailed Native and African culture for after-school programming for students in grades K-5.
  • Grew to The Middle Passage Part I and II (Slave Narratives) for JHS and HS students. Within that, Mentoring program. Building youths in confidence, support, communication, and growth within themselves and their peers.
  • From the Passage program, The Trails Coming Home program. Using arts program for all grades in a more diverse way of educational and personal growth with more diversity and multi-cultural awareness by understanding cultures from around the world, their history and shared history.
  • 2016 -Creative Arts Therapy “The Road to Empowerment” for students who cannot participate in a regular program due to mental health challenges. This allows them to participate in other ways without feeling left out, building their self-confidence and other forms of developments.
  • 2018 – The Nina Simone Program.
  • Current – The Journey – a continuation of The Middle Passage, and The Trails Coming Home.

Partnership Programs:

  • Department of Education (regular/after-school).
  • TASC
  • Children’s Aid Society
  • Queens Library
  • Something Positive, Inc.
  • QIIQ Theater
  • CATs of Color
  • Beacon

AWARDS:

  • Union Square Award for Art Education programming
  • Proclamation Award by Former Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz
  • Sankofa Community Award
  • Blackfoot & Cherokee Community Award
  • The Uplift Award – Juneteenth Committee of NY

Articles & Interviews

  • WBAI Radio Station ―Coming Together of African & Native People.
  • NY Daily News article on Middle Passage program
  • 2007 — CBS (Channel 2) Education Special
  • 2006 — Medgar Evers College. Talk Radio. Literacy in the Arts
  • 2004 — NY Borough President Award & Proclamation for Art programs
  • 1999 — ABC’S (Channel 7) Like it Is with Journalist Gil Noble &
  • Good Morning America
  • BCAT—Cable show. Interview/Documentary
  • 1998 — NY Post Newspaper