Empowering Rwandan Street Children With Dance And IT

When Rebecca Davis researched the genocide in Darfur for a dance she was choreographing in the U.S., she was so moved that she changed her dance company’s mission.

“I realized that the arts can be a very powerful tool in post-conflict recovery,”  Davis said.

Now she uses dance and IT to help street children in Rwanda, Guinea and Bosnia, raising funds through crowd sourcing and private donations.

More than 700 street children and orphans have learned dance and IT through the Rebecca Davis Dance Company and its Dance-IT Program for Street Children.

Living in Philadelphia and reading about Darfur, Davis said, “I decided to translate it into an art form.” In 2008 she went to Africa for the first time. “I was curious what a society had to do to rebuild to bring children back into an environment where they can be a productive again. There’s such a need for that kind of work.”

LaMar Baylor, 27, is cultural ambassador for the New York-based nonprofit, Rebecca Davis Dance Company.

Baylor lives in alternate realities. He’s a Broadway dancer in Disney’s “The Lion King,” and he’s teaching Rwandan street children how to change their lives through dance.

Dance helps vulnerable kids become their own agents of change, Baylor said. He traveled to Rwanda for a week in November. It was his second trip.

There he worked with orphans and street children, and trained dance teachers to work with them once he was gone. About 700 children have been enrolled in the company’s dance and IT program.

Once a full-fledged U.S. dance company that funded and staged dance performances in the U.S., the Rebecca Davis Dance Company changed its mission to focus on educating street children in countries struggling with post-conflict recovery.

“This was Rebecca Davis’s vision,” Baylor said. “When I hear her name I think of a pioneer.”

A New York City resident, Rebecca Davis, 31, grew up in Canada.

In 2007, she founded a nonprofit for performing arts in Philadelphia and initially received funding through private and public grants and donations to create ballets in the U.S. In 2010, after researching the genocide in Darfur for a new dance she was choreographing, Davis changed the dance company’s mission.

The Rebecca Davis Dance Company stopped seeking funds for performing arts in the U.S. and instead, raised money to send dancers into third-world countries to better children’s lives through performing arts.

It’s still Rebecca Davis Dance Company, Davis said, “but we don’t have a contracted group of professional performers in the U.S. Instead we contract performers to travel with us and improve the capacity of local teachers abroad. We have a country director who hires local teachers. We bring dance teachers and dancers to help local teachers in Rwanda and Guinea in West Africa and Bosnia-Herzogovina.”

Originally from South Jersey, Baylor says dance can change the lives of Rwandan youth the way it changed his life. He has started a scholarship fund to help send deserving youth to school in Rwanda and has raised enough through crowdsourcing on Global Giving to support students.

Baylor danced through high school and became a member of Rebecca Davis Dance Company in 2007. At the time it was one of the new contemporary ballet companies in Philadelphia and being accepted was a big deal, he said. “(Davis) did interesting work because it was based on literature and social awareness,” Baylor said. “Her name was the buzz of the city. She sought me out.”

At the dance company, Baylor worked as a rehearsal director, principal dancer and taught at the academy. He danced with Davis until he graduated from the University of Philadelphia. Then he joined the Philadelphia Dance Co., auditioned for “Lion King” in March 2012 and got an offer in June to perform on Broadway.

As an ensemble dancer for “Lion King,” Baylor dances the parts of a zebra, an ostrich, a hyena, a blade of grass and a kite flyer. His work on “Lion King” took him to Mexico, Chile, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, but not Africa.

When Davis did research on “Darfur,” a ballet she was choreographing about the genocide in Sudan, Baylor told her he’d love to go to Africa one day. Davis took him seriously.

“Then she sent me a random email saying it was time,” he said.

Baylor taught in Kigali, Rwanda for three weeks in December 2011, returning a second time in November.

There he met the orphans who became his students — street children who he said had been tortured, abandoned, incarcerated or prostituted.

“They have been through the most tragic experiences we could fathom,” he said.

One of the students is Fulgence Niyongana, 14.

Fulgence once said he would never dance, but is now a top students in the Dance-IT Program for Street Children in Kigali, Rwanda, according to the company’s website.

The Rwandan dance teachers were afraid Fulgence might end up back on the street, Instead, Fulgence walks an hour-and-a-half from home to attend the program five days a week. He lives with his stepmother, who gives him permission to attend the programs.

“I feel so happy because I made the decision not to go back to the streets as long as you are teaching me dance and IT,” Fulgence said. “Dance changed my life; I feel relaxed and free after dance class. I never thought I would touch a computer. Now, I can even Skype with people around the world.”

Fulgence has new friends, none of whom live on the street. “My friends are those who attend school and dance,” he said.

“Once Fulgence leaves home, his stepmother calls me and once he leaves RDDC class, I call his stepmother,” said his teacher, Eugene Dushime. “Then, when he arrives at home, his stepmother calls me again. This is how Fulgence has become protected against street life.”

Dushime is the country director for Rebecca Davis Dance Company Rwanda. He is a former contemporary dancer and assists with the program in Guinea as well.

On Baylor’s first trip to Rwanda, he taught students age 15 to 22 — including genocide survivors who had become heads of their households. On his second trip, he taught children ages 6 to 14.

Dance is a vehicle to teach discipline, self esteem, provide routine, and allow street children to express themselves through movement without having to speak about it, Baylor said.

“Every day was amazing being able to share my knowledge,” he said. “They were so eager and hungry to learn. The kids were completely open. Watching them retain the information was probably the most rewarding part. The information I was giving them was actually seeping through as I watched.”

The language barrier was only a problem in the beginning.

“At first it was like a jungle. We couldn’t control them,”Baylor said. “But after they began to understand, it was amazing to see the change. We created pieces of choreography for them.”

Baylor said he knows the teaching has had a lasting influence. He and Davis trained two student teachers to keep the program going.

“I would send them technique DVDs of the modern Horton technique,” he said. “They adapted everything I taught them. I was blown away at what these kids were able to do in so little time. They learned the Horton flat-back series (a warm-up) really fast.”

What did the children learn other than technical dancing?

“They got consistency which is something that’s rare in their lives,” Baylor said. “Consistent training, consistent teaching, consistent love and affection and a consistent support system just for those few weeks while I was there.”

Rwandan culture doesn’t see dance as a profession but the things you learn in a dance class are things you can use in your everyday life, Baylor said. “It’s not just a physical training but an emotional and mental one that allows you to divide and conquer life’s adversities.”

While Baylor was in Rwanda he started a fundraiser — the Lamar Baylor Scholarship Fund. Through Indegogo, he raised $1,625 — enough to put a child through boarding school for a year in Rwanda. The company needs funding.

There are no official statistics on the number of street children in Rwanda, but estimates run in the several thousands, according to RDDC. Children are forced onto the streets because of poverty, domestic abuse, or parental rejection. The child’s mental state switches to one of survival, with energy devoted solely to finding food and a place to sleep. There’s no time or money for education or self-betterment. Street children are illiterate, have no vocational skills, and suffer from a deep sense of worthlessness.

RDDC runs a three-tier program. First, children in post-conflict countries attend dance classes that foster the transformation of aggressive energy into a positive, aesthetic art form. Second, top dance students are invited to go to the RDDC IT Center that teaches a standardized curriculum of MS programs, email, and Google search skills. Third, top students receive RDDC scholarships to attend boarding school, which is the ultimate solution, RDDC says, to breaking the poverty cycle. It provides shelter, nutrition, clothing and education.

The RDDC program runs 365 days a year. It serves about 700 children. About 12 percent go on to boarding school. The goal is to increase that to 100 percent. Its success is limited by resources, Davis said. Funds come from family foundations, Jewish Helping Hand, State Department funding and crowd source funding. College students, dance studios and individuals donate $25 a year, “and that adds up a lot,” Davis said.

Davis said she can see the benefits and developmental changes in people she works with, especially in Rwanda.

Once the students make it to boarding school, they have a safe place to sleep, three meals a day and education. “You know the child will eventually become self sustaining,” Davis said.

The RDDC Program has a proven track record of success in Rwanda. Over time, this model can be adopted by other non-governmental organizations in more countries to tackle the issue of street children on a global scale, Davis said.

To donate to the Rebecca Davis Dance Company’s Dance-IT Program for Street Children, go to Global Giving.