At Free Arts, trees are a powerful metaphor for our work with people. One will find trees in our logo and in numerous places in the artwork dedicated to celebrating the organization’s mission. The metaphor has power because trees, like people, thrive when they have vital supports and conditions. Free Arts serves children and families who have experienced trauma due to abuse, neglect, or homelessness. These experiences limit someone’s personal resources for support and create adverse conditions.
Limited supports and adverse conditions are a set of contexts that are experienced in individual ways by each participant. Realizing and understanding these contexts has led Free Arts to consider its theory of how people change, its mission, its vision, and shared agreements for mutual respect and care. These contexts include personal experiences, family and social histories, social values, and the complex web of social services.
Many of the participants in programs have endured more than their share of family trauma, racism, and poverty. All combined, these experiences can lead children and families into systems such as foster care and shelter services. Unfortunately, we witness how these social issues and systems can cause further trauma, even as providers coordinate much needed services. Organizations like Free Arts, that provide services adjacent to these systems, have a responsibility to understand and address the myriad and overlapping contexts that have led children, teens and families to our programs.
Though we do not have an advocacy-specific mission, we will support education and advocacy working on behalf of children and families experiencing trauma. We can borrow from our colleagues in social work who follow ethical standards that guide their work in valuing the dignity and worth of a person and centering human relationships. Free Arts will educate staff, artists, mentors, and other volunteers about the negative impacts of discrimination and have adopted policies that prohibit discrimination. We will examine our own biases and encourage others to do the same. We will educate our staff, volunteers, and supporters about vital support systems and identify structural conditions that contribute to disparities in the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
To support valuing the dignity and worth of a person, we will work to be mindful of individual differences in thinking and behavior. We will treat all people with dignity and respect. We will seek to eliminate factors that threaten the dignity and worth of individuals and do so with a decentered approach that respects differences. Rather than imposing our own values, we will leverage the values of the children, families, and communities we serve. Free Arts has many practical avenues for supporting these ethical standards. We will work to recruit volunteers that have lived experience, cultural identities, and language that mirror the children we serve. We can ensure that adults who represent Free Arts are educated about cultural backgrounds and identities that may be represented in the children that we serve. In our training and onboarding, we will educate our staff and volunteers on systemic challenges and how these challenges can perpetuate the trauma and negative health outcomes experienced by children in our programs. Through our efforts to build Free Arts into a more impactful organization, we will work to ensure all places where power is concentrated allow space for input, reflection, and contribution by everyone working to meet the demands of our mission.
Free Arts does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), veteran status, ancestry, sexual orientation, identity expression, or any other basis prohibited by law.
Read our full Non-Discrimination Policy here.