East Africa Programs

Community Workshops & Trainings

CAALN’s sustainability goals include community workshops and trainings where local staff and TAPTA participants conduct workshops based on TAPTA trainings and its train-the-trainer model.  Community workshops involve local teachers, community development and social workers, medical professionals, visual artists and dancers.

Two community workshops were held in 2025: one in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, and the other in the Kibera Slum in Nairobi, Kenya. 19 people participated in the Bagamoyo workshop and 17 participants in Kibera. These workshops enhance the training skills of the facilitators and introduce the creative arts therapies to community workers. Selected participants may also participate in the TAPTA trip.

Four people stand holding up a work of art and two other people kneel in front of them, holding up art

Therapeutic Arts Program Grants

CAALN provides small grants to support therapeutic arts projects implemented by applicants who have previously participated in the Therapeutic Arts Paraprofessional Training in Africa (TAPTA) program. Examples of grants include:

A therapeutic drama program for girls in Tanzania that focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights education and addressed issues like sexual assault and teenage pregnancy. 

A therapeutic arts program for displaced youth in a Uganda refugee settlement, providing expressive arts, dance, folk storytelling, music, drama, and psychoeducation to improve social-emotional and psychological wellbeing

A therapeutic visual art program that addressed the emotional needs of adolescent orphans in Tanzania who have been abandoned due to their own or their parents’ AIDS diagnoses.

A creative journaling project in a Tanzania hospital for children with a cancer diagnosis.