Parents think you are in therapy, you think you are beatboxing (and everyone is right)
Take, for example, this problem: Young people in need of speech therapy know that speech therapy is hard. It is a frustrating and difficult process especially when trying to carry over lessons into real speech improvement and eventual independence. Many of the existing teaching methods themselves are in fact, effective, however they are also uninspiring, often failing to intrinsically motivate the student to want to improve him/herself. The students are bored to tears during their speech therapy sessions, but they do it because ultimately it is necessary and it does work.
However, this initiative has a transformative magic program improving this therapy through beatboxing. The changemakers behind the project imagined a tool, a technology, to make speech therapy fun, interactive, and creatively empowering. The impact of this curriculum may disrupt the entire field and positively affect the lives of tens of millions of young people. One student in particular, Diego (7 years old), joined the sessions with several articulation issues, but left with those issues markedly improved. To him, he was just beatboxing. But to his parents and doctors, he had adopted a set of practices that improved his speech. This is a vibrant arts education nonprofit organization that empowers youth and artists by creating solutions to real-world issues through creative self-expression rooted in Hip Hop culture.
The problem that this initiative is solving is a problem of accessibility. In this day and age, there are no boundaries to information. However, making information appealing and engaging is another struggle entirely. Our organization focuses on activities and art forms that youth find inherently fun to solve real world problems. Now, the next challenges of the project are growth, scalability, and sustainability. Specifically, the entrepreneurs are designing a set of online lesson plans and games that use beatboxing, verbal expression, and music as tools for speech therapy. But they are also growing programming that teach nutrition and healthy living through bboying/bgirling. This programming can actually be used to get youth engaged with any of the SDGs. While making art is the core of all of our curricula, the goal can be changed for any program’s specific needs.