Djole African Dance and Drum Company

Djole draws on face-to-face interaction, live performance, and information and community technologies (ICTs) in an effort to:

1. Provide dance and job training to youth and young adults - Djole offers an ongoing course at the Community Center that focuses on skills such as how to complete a job application, find a job, participate in an interview, and retain a job. Another course teaches basic computer skills. However, since dance is the organisation's key focus, mentoring Djole Dance Company youth to move into performing with a local adult dance company is a central focus. Youth rehearse on a weekly basis at the Gethsemani Community Center in the neighbourhood and have performed for local, national, and international arts festivals.
2. Provide academic enrichment - Djole offers an after-school homework and tutoring programme at the Community Center. In addition, the organisation has developed various contests to motivate youth, such as "The Great Math Challenge", reading incentive programmes, spelling bees, writing (short-story and poetry) contests, an annual "Soul Bowl" (a game show with general academic questions across various categories that the children answer in teams). Djole provides scholarship funds for youth who attend college or technical school, and supports youth in attending the annual Cannon Street YMCA Black College Tour. Djole also hosts events that are designed to communicate health information on diseases which youth in this community are vulnerable to, including diabetes, hypertension, and HIV/AIDS.
3. Improve neighbourhood and family cohesion - Djole conducts entertaining activities to foster communication and connection, such as the father-daughter dinner, the mother-son banquet, the sons of Union Heights breakfast, and a basketball game involving police officers and youth.
4. Improve quality of life for senior citizens - Djole provides a weekly crafts meeting in which seniors gather, socialise, and do hand work. The organisation provides regular exercise programmes for the elderly, conducts field trips that get seniors out of their home and give them an opportunity to interact with each other and people outside their neighbourhood, and offers information to seniors regarding health care and financial management.

Djole also works to create an opportunity for global learning and a cultural exchange through international activities. The organisation conducts field trips to give young participants the opportunity to learn about other places, other cultures, and issues children and their families face - as well as to gain skills in communicating and disseminating information through the arts. For example, in the summer of 2006, Djole led a group of young dancers on a journey to Africa. To begin, Lowcountry AIDS Services staff visited the Gethsemani Community Center and taught a specific AIDS curriculum, which was developed in conjunction with the Red Cross, to Djole youth and any adults going on the trip. In addition, College of Charleston students from the campus diversity programme briefed the children on West African culture.

Participants then travelled to West Africa and South Africa, where they collaborated with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Nkabom Artists and Craftspeople. Organisers explain that, in Africa, traditional African dance and drumming is a key means of disseminating information, so - with the help of their African partners - Djole learned, rehearsed, and performed an AIDS education performance in collaboration with 7 other groups of artists. Shows were held at a school for street children, an orphanage, and at the Elmina Slave Castle in Cape Coast. A large AIDS awareness arts event was presented in Ghana that included multiple performing artists and bands; it was co-sponsored by the Ghana Dance Association and the Ghana National Commission on Culture. While on this journey, Djole also helped Nkabom launch construction on an arts and job-training centre that aims to provide a venue for working with disadvantaged and street children, and for pulling women who are involved in the sex trade off the street and into job training.

The goal of this journey was to use live performance to enable children from the United States to share the information they had learned about preventing HIV/AIDS with - and, importantly to also learn from - street children in Africa who are at high risk or contracting AIDS, who may have AIDS, or who have lost family members due to AIDS. Djole's strategy in planning the intercultural exchange was to increase tolerance among participants for other cultures, ways of life, and ways of doing things, and perhaps lead them toward careers in health care, humanitarian action, and the like.

Djole planned to share information learned from the project by speaking publicly to youth and civic groups about the trip, and by encouraging participants in the journey to share their experiences informally with friends, family, and schoolmates. In addition, local television station partners and two filmmakers accompanied the group on the trip to shoot footage for development of a documentary.

Children, Youth, Education, Economic Development, Health, HIV/AIDS.

"Djole" is a word which, when used as an adjective, means "much dance"; when used as a noun, it means "spirit dance".

The Union Heights neighbourhood is comprised of approximately 2,500 individuals, roughly 99% of whom are African American. People in the neighbourhood experience economic disadvantage (mean household income = US$13,583) and low educational opportunities/background (75% of residents did not complete high school). In addition, the community has struggled with the problems of crime and drugs.

Here is a reflection from one of the Djole organisers who participated in the trip to Africa, described above: "On the way back to Accra from Cape Coast, we visited an orphanage. Some of the children going down to age 1 were there because of loss of parents due to AIDS. We played games with the children led by Powerful and our dance teacher, Na Na, in the Ga language....When we arrived back in Accra, we visited the Children's Hospital....This visit had a profound effect on all of us. We knew that some of the children we saw would be lost due to basic illnesses that we would view as routine in the U.S. On our final day in Ghana, we conducted an AIDS performance at the Street Children's Academy....The children from the academy conducted a performance for us and then we delivered our HIV/AIDS performance for them. Djole youth had a lot of interaction with the kids. It was difficult for us knowing that they come to the school by day but are on the streets at night and some of them are preschool age. Our kids were also impacted by seeing children their same age that are much smaller due to malnutrition..."