clownswithoutborders.org

    Clowns Without Borders USA and Pasos de Payasos Colombia will be collaborating again to bring smiles to communities in Dosquebradas, Risaralda, Colombia.  This area with a population of 200,000 has seen years of the damaging impacts of forced displacement that ruptures family dynamics, narcotrafficking  and influxes of child labor.  Pasos de Payasos formed in [...]

CWB returns to Haiti with four clowns (Selena McMahan, Marykristñ Simoneau, Bénédicte Monnaux and Jeff Seal) to work with War Child Canada for teacher training and performances in Port au Prince and Jacmel.

Tim is representing CWB this year at the Encuentro, teaching, presenting and facilitating interventions a la Clowns Without Borders. CWB is grateful to the organizers and inspiring forces behind the Encuentro. The Clown Encuentro is a prime example of sustainability in community based clowning and social circus.

CWB has completed a most wonderful collaboration with Terre Des Hommes this spring!

We offered a 5 week training in Les Cayes and Grand Goave, bringing in 7 artists! We collaborated with Terre des Hommes for the second time, building on a project started in September 2010. Our volunteer artists taught (and played with) the same group of community leaders and children to continue the training in circus skills, physical comedy and the psycho-social relief.

Scrolling down this page you will find:
Project Description and Goals
Photos
Journals.

Rudi returned to Chiapas this winter to work in Zapatista Caricoles with Schools for Chiapas.org. To continue to train and mentor new CWB touring clowns.

Building on the successful initial project in Bogota in November 2009, CWB returns to Colombia in 2011 to bring relief to the vulnerable children of Colombia.

CWB USA and PSF Spain are working together again with Plan International. Kristi Hughes, Michael Oneill and Erin Crites will join Spanish clown, Pedro Izquierda to perform and provide workshops for children in Jacmel and Croix des Bouquets, Haiti.

This October, three CWB volunteers will go to Haiti to visit temporary camps run by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Port-au-Prince.

During the project, the clowns will hold 8-12 performances reaching 4,000-5,000 children and the broader community, a number of circus/theatre workshops with children and hold two half day training sessions for IRC educators in teaching circus and theatre games to build capacity for play activities to continue throughout the year.

Since Sept 4th Clowns Without Borders USA has been in the field working with Terre des Hommes, a child protection organization based in Port au Prince, Haiti and with field posts in Grand Goave (the epicenter of the January earthquake) and Les Cayes. We’ve been invited to do “a training of the teachers” work in clown, acrobatics, juggling and psychosocial support as it relates to play. For two weeks we’ve taught workshops in the mornings to child educators and then each afternoon we’ve worked with a group of 20 children, developing circus routines and playing games. The children we’ve been teaching have been featured guests in each of our performances.

In 2010 we were planning four projects in Haiti. These projects would have focused on performances for large and small audiences, workshops for street children in and around Port Au Prince, peer educators who go into their own communities to bring awareness to HIV and AIDS and local performing artists with hopes for empowering Haitians through physical theatre, clown and social circus. After the earthquakes that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, our focus shifted. We are now working with our international partners and local NGOs working in Haiti to bring small moments of relief to those affected by the trauma of the earthquakes.