BluePrint Pathways (http://www.blueprintforlife.ca/)
Get to know the team, campaign activity and updates:
https://www.facebook.com/BluePrintPathways
**CAMPAIGN UPDATE: 1 DAY LEFT!
Big and loud THANKS to everyone that helped ensure we hit that tipping point goal - but Hip Hop don't stop; there's more work to be done. Keep sharing the cause and spreading the word.
Meet some of the BluePrint team in this mixtape teaser:
https://soundcloud.com/dabadone/blueprint-pathways-mixtape-teaser
“Hip Hop is supposed to be about community – but we are also a community that sometimes struggles on a personal level.
This is grassroots Hip Hop, even a dollar from peeps can make a difference. Hip Hop is changing the world.”
Recognizing Hip Hop as a language that resonates with youth everywhere, Stephen Leafloor’s vision of “no youth left behind” is a call to action for the global Hip Hop community
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Capitalizing on the popularity of HipHop, BluePrintForLife has been bringing positive HipHop healing workshops to remote communities in Northern Canada. Now it's time to reach the minds of the youth in the Calgary Young Offenders
Centre. Between learning how to toprock and get down from some of Canada's finest HipHop Artistic Educators, the youth discuss what angers them and the paths that led them to lives of violence, crime, and incarceration. Five days later they emerge not only
equipped with newfound artistic skills and connections to positive role models, but as resilient youth, with coping skills, positive mental health techniques, and the resolve to create change in their lives.
BluePrint Pathways combines compassion through a passion for Hip Hop, and recognizes the potential for Hip Hop culture as:
*a vehicle for youth outreach
*accessibility to positive mental health techniques
*an alternative approach to holistic healing
*a means to celebrate diversity, tradition, and personal stories
*a community that gives back
Previously, the work of BluePrintForLife has impacted approximately 5000 youth in over 72 projects in First Nations, Inuit and new immigrant urban communities.
Part of the success of this program is its ability to connect with youth while acknowledging the reality of the environment that influences them. With the expansion of this work into youth correctional facilities, BluePrint Pathways
has developed an authentic, culturally-relevant, 5- day program which is designed to reduce maladaptive behaviours, provide impulse control techniques, alternatives to gang affiliation through positive mentorship, and reduce rates of incarceration. By sharing
a variety of tools and impulse control techniques, these young people learn lifelong coping strategies and gain hope for their future.
To assist this important work, BluePrint Pathways has been awarded a Federal grant from Justice Canada to provide programming to youth correctional facilities for the next three years. With this generous funding, we will be able to bring our non-traditional,
rehabilitative approach to incarcerated youth. Unfortunately, the funding falls a bit short of providing some of the resources needed to implement the project as widely as we had hope.
Youth in our past pilot outreach programs in correctional facilities have expressed the positive effects of our program and staff:
We have a saying in BluePrint that "They come for the Hip Hopbut stay for the healing."
It has been the experience of BluePrintForLife that after our initial project in a community, the youth are starting to trust again and many of them want to start the long journey of healing in their lives. It has also been our experience that our programs
often win the trust of the parents and Elders in a community and we hope to leverage this by taking the healing process to the next level. Creating hope and new visions for their future is an important place to start. We have often heard from youth that our
program is the first time they have felt safe or that it's been the happiest memory they have ever experienced.
We hope to start a process that helps youth become more self-aware, reach out for the support of positive role models and their community, and to also realize that they are all responsible for each other, diverting their focus instead to the positive Hip Hop
values of peace, love, unity and respect.
Who are we? - BluePrint For Life Founder and Staff
The Canadian Hip Hop scene is recognized internationally and holds a legacy of being raw and innovative. These artists are daily Hip Hop practitioners and have dedicated their lives to pushing their craft and giving back to the community, redefining their
roles beyond that of "artist" to include educators, outreach workers, and mentors. With their sense of social responsibility and effective facilitation techniques, their connection with the youth is unparalleled.
BluePrintForLife founder, Stephen "Buddha" Leafloor has a Masters in Social Work and over 30 years experience as a social worker in the areas of probation, wilderness programs, and street work with youth at risk, residential group homes,
child protection and community outreach. Stephen has also been an active participant in the Hiphop culture as a dancer since 1982 and completed his master’s thesis on this culture and its importance for educators and social workers in 1986.
He was recently appointed as an “Ashoka Fellow” for Canada, one of the world's most prestigious organizations for international outreach (http://canada.ashoka.org). In 2012, he was selected as one of Canada's
“Top 45 over 45” for Zoomers magazine.
As co-founder of the Canadian Floor Masters, (Canada’s oldest B-Boy / breakdance crew 1983), Stephen has performed for James Brown, Rapper IceT, Grandmaster Flash, BlackEyed Peas and George Clinton. His dancing has been featured on Much Music, in assorted
music videos and in a number of documentaries. He has also performed privately for the Kirov Ballet of Russia and opened for La La La Human Steps at Canada’s National Arts Centre.
The staff of BluePrint For Life have equally impressive accolades and not only reflect the cross-cultural mosaic of Canada, but are also some of Canada’s top dancers, youth facilitators, artist educators, and outreach workers. Through shared
experiences and interests, their ability to gain trust and resonate with youth builds effective and lasting mentorship, and they are testament that Hip Hop can shape lives positively.
Who else believes in BluePrintForLife?
Institutional partnerships with mental health professionals and recently through the Federal Government's Youth Justice Fund, is evidence that our work is being recognized. Over this 3-year partnership, we hope to ignite change in the old ways of thinking
about youth mental health and social outreach, while adding to the emerging scientific base of knowledge concerning health and Hip Hop.
During an earlier pilot program at the Calgary Young Offenders Center, administration described it as "the most intense and healing program they have ever seen" and 86% of participants deemed they had more strategies and abilities to deal with anger
and emotional issues.
The demand for the program is immense and the benefit is not only heard in the voices of the youth themselves, but from elders, teachers, law enforcement agencies, government officials, public health and social workers. Arctic Government officials
have described the work of BluePrintForLife as "the most substantial youth engagement programming in 20 years". This work has also been recognized by the former Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, as compelling and important. She recently
presented BluePrintForLife with an award for outstanding achievement and outreach. In November of 2010 BluePrintForLife was the first organization from North America to ever be profiled as a top finalist in the world’s most prestigious award for outreach
through the arts. The “Freedom to Create” awards receive thousands of applications every year and BluePrintForLife is honoured to be recognized internationally.
CALL TO ACTION - Help us get these programs where they are needed!
We believe that our approach to youth mental health outreach is unique in leveraging the capacity of professional Hip Hop artists to reach the minds of youth in correctional facilities who feel alienated and without a voice. There is enormous
transformative potential in using Hip Hop culture and its artforms as vehicles for self-expression, creativity, emotion-coping, and cultural connection. With appropriate mentorship focussed on the positive aspects of Hip Hop culture, these youth can be directed
away from future gang-related activity.
We are grateful to have been awarded funding for our program but have fallen short of providing some of the resources needed to implement the project.
So we are reaching out to YOU to help get these programs into four correctional facilities across Canada, with the hope of expanding and sharing our work with other communities in the world.
Any amount is appreciated and your gift will not go unrecognized. Tokens of thanks include shoutouts, BluePrint shirts and graffiti snapback hats, photos and photobooks, and even keynote talks by Buddha for donations from organizations and corporations.
Please share our work and campaign widely with:
*supporters of social innovation for social issues
*potential partners with indigenous communities
*anyone with a love for Hip Hop culture
*front-line social workers and outreach workers
*those involved in the fields of Justice, Education, and Health
*advocates for arts-based approaches to wellness
*media outlets, your personal networks
BluePrintForLife T-Shirt
BluePrintForLife Graffiti Snapback
Elder DJ's of the North Photobook
Arctic HipHop Photobook
Elder DJ Photo Print Collection
REWARDS UPDATE: We will be adding the names of everyone who donates over $50.00 to a draw for this double tape-deck bad boy - for those who live in Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal.
