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Eyes on the Prize
Freedom Arts is growing. God has been very generous to us and our programs have reached viable points where they are steadily serving our scholars and our community. Our team consists of motivated and quality artists, educators, and mentors. Our artists have learned how to teach and our educators have developed their artistic skills. Our squad has years of experience in the arts, education, outreach, and social work. The level of commitment from these people is not only inspiring, but vital to the growth and overall health of our organization as our scholar engagement has increased and our program demand has gone up. Freedom Arts is indeed getting stronger every day and we are thankful and honored to be serving St Louis.
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So what’s next for Freedom Arts? We have three big goals for 2015:
Scholar Transportation
We currently use personal vehicles to transport our scholars to and from events. Due to our growing scholar enrollment and program expansion, we have to use multiple vehicles and enlist extra volunteers to drive. We would like to improve and simplify our transportation methods by obtaining at least two reliable 10-passenger vans. Though our scholars have requested limousines and helicopters, we believe that vans will get the job done!
Staff Compensation
Our Leadership Team works tireless hours developing programs, designing events, meeting with potential partners, meeting with parents, receiving training, providing training, managing finances, meeting together, and generally running and growing the organization. This group of talented and devoted teaching artists works for pay that is far below minimum wage. As we enter our fourth year, we would like to leave other jobs in order to work for Freedom Arts full time and be able to devote ourselves to this mission at a higher level.
Sufficient Location
We are deeply grateful to Clayton Community Church for allowing us to use their building in Rock Hill. We are intensely humbled by their generosity and support. We are excited that our programs have reached a point where we can actively begin fundraising and searching for our home, for the actual Freedom Arts & Education Center. We are looking for a location that is 5-8 miles from our scholars’ homes in Hamilton Heights with a large common area, at least 6 classrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a parking lot.
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