“behavioral skills and self-confidence through the arts”

In FY' 06, HAI presented over 800 educational workshops and performances to an audience totaling over 40,000.

HAI’s Prevention Education Program uses theater arts to confront health and social challenges. Conducted in schools, detention centers, community centers and other youth venues, these performances and workshops physically, intellectually and emotionally engage audiences, challenging individuals to assess and solve difficult issues independently. HAI’s Prevention Education programs include education workshops, professional development and five youth theater productions: Take Ya Time; Respect; Peace by Peace; Loss & Gain and Heart and Mind.

Education Workshops
Year Began: 1994
A prevention based model of role-play is used to develop behavioral skills and to teach lifesaving coping mechanisms that relate to issues such as HIV/AIDS, violence, substance abuse and homelessness. Trained HAI facilitators assisted by peer educators present theatrical scenarios recreating real-life situations. Workshop participants then experiment with constructive reactions, preparing to handle appropriately similar situations in their daily lives.

Professional Development
Year Began: 2005

A service that provides educators and other school professionals with strategies to facilitate communication with their students about sensitive issues. Role-play is used by actor-facilitators to dramatize scenarios in which educators participate and acquire techniques to better relate to and help their students.

Theatre methodology

HAI uses theatrical, improvisational, and role-play techniques to create a forum for participants to explore structural problems they may face, as well as possible solutions. Teaching artists use HAI-designed curriculum, creatively challenging participants to explore issues that range from peer pressure, cultural diversity, conflict resolutions, domestic violence, drug abuse, or unsafe sex practices. Each workshop is student- centered and customized to engage participants in critical thinking through innovative and current arts-in-education practices.

HAI's role-play model is the brainchild of Richard G. Dudley, M.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, NY Medical College; Associate Professor of Medicine, City University of New York, and former Commissioner of the Black leadership Commission on AIDS, who created scenarios and role-play characters based on information secured from in-depth focus groups with the target populations.

HAI's professional teaching artists attend on-going training to keep them up-to-date on ever-evolving information and methodology.

For further information about Peer Educators