Cultural Arts Initiative: 2004-2005

 

The Vieques Youth Leadership Initiative prepares young and emerging leaders to help build a new Vieques. Our projects educate, empower and challenge young Viequenses to make their dreams come true. We build partnerships with people, organizations and companies around the world. The Cultural Arts Initiative is an after-school program that exposes young people to successful artists/musicians; provides training and mentoring; develops projects; opens doors and creates opportunities to showcase their work and become entrepreneurs. We are honored that rock star, Tito Auger, lead singer/songwriter in the successful Spanish Rock band, Fiel a la Vega has chosen the INITIATIVE as his special project for the coming year. Tito travels from San Juan to donate his time and talents – serving as an inspiring role model for young Viequenses. In October, Tito visited 40 classrooms at the middle and high schools. The response was tremendous! We received over 70 applications from young people describing their dreams for their future and Vieques, as well as their creative ideas, and what they would like to learn. During the last year we have put in place a powerful strategy and developed preliminary partnerships with national organizations prepared to collaborate with us in the coming years.

We’ve worked with Tito and young writers-poets, artists, dancers and musicians to develop projects that express their vision of a new Vieques. In our weekly after-school workshops, we designed an inspiring logo that represents our dreams; created a bi-lingual Vieques Positiva photo exhibit with colorful banners and hung it in the Vieques Airport. We’ve created two major murals: one with baseball hero Carlos Delgado. The one in the Town Plaza features their dreams for Vieques for a vibrant and sustainable Island. We’ve held four major events -- two in San Juan. Coordinated an artist training at the Island’s largest gallery; had our first Culinary Arts internship with a top restaurant; created a cross-cultural exchange with students from Martha’s Vineyard and piloted our T-Shirt business during the busiest tourist season in Vieques history. We created a hit song, performed it at community events, recorded it in Danny Rivera’s studio and are now working on a video to bring our message of hope to the world.

By engaging young people in cultural arts and creating community projects and events, we are giving them opportunities and connecting them with their Island’s future. Statistically, young people who get involved are less likely to drink, do drugs, get pregnant, drop out of school – and more likely to stay in school, go to college and be caring citizens. “We have a dream to create our own Radio Station with educational programs and music, produced in our own studio and performed at community events,” says Tito. “Through the universal language of arts and music, we will build bridges with people in Vieques, Puerto Rico and the world and create positive long-lasting relationships that will positively impact the Island’s future.”

Tito Auger’s love for Vieques led him on a two-year journey and the making of The Song of Vieques with a stellar cast of international superstars like Ruben Blades, Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes, Joan Manuel Serrat. The six-minute anthem and video, dubbed the Spanish We Are the World, was featured on Puerto Rican radio & TV.

Kutasha Silva is the 23-year old Project Coordinator of the Cultural Arts Initiative. An accomplished cellist from Moca and Vieques, she studied at Escuela Libre de Bellas Artes in Mayaguez and El Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico in San Juan. At 16 she traveled with the New England Youth Orchestra and toured through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Iceland, Scandinavia and Russia. Kutasha has also studied dance in Western Africa. She has a B.A in Women Studies from University of Maryland, College Park, specializing in teen pregnancy prevention.

VYLI is a collective effort of business and community leaders and spearheaded by The Stone Soup Leadership Institute, a 501c3 international education organization, founded in 1997 by Marianne Larned, author of Stone Soup for the World and its educational curriculum. The Institute develops educational tools, trainings and initiatives for young-emerging leaders to build a better world. The Institute works with humanitarian celebrities for events like the Celebration of Heroes with Walter Cronkite in Martha’s Vineyard 2000 & New York City in 2002.