art, education, and cultural
exchange programs
for both youth and adults globally
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for both youth and adults globally
Kiboko Projects is a 501 c 3 non-profit organization that implements workshops, exhibitions, and cultural exchange programs for youth and adults nationally and internationally, focused on topics relevant to all cultures.
We strive to enable dialogue between people in different areas of the world in which they can share with each other a firsthand, unfiltered, look at their lives and their stories, using a wide range of creative media.
Participants have included such discrete groups as people with HIV/AIDS, students, and artists.
They have an opportunity to tell their stories and to hear the stories of similar groups in other cultures using many types of creative media, from photography to mask making to books.
Since 1999, Kiboko Projects has sponsored many programs globally: the most recent projects have centered more on health and the environment, working with a wide range of students and professionals.
Kiboko Projects is a 501 c 3 organization incorporated in New York State in 1999. EIN 13-4093810
Kiboko Projects’ latest program is in the field of One Health, which is an approach to health that recognizes that the health of humans, animals, and the environment are interdependent. An effect on any of those domains will also have an effect on the others.
We began the project in 2022, collaborating with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. A group of medical students mentored high school students from Lehman High School, in the Bronx, teaching them about One Health through a series of lessons. The Lehman students then created a photo book, including text, documenting instances of One Health in their homes and communities.
In 2023, we traveled to Kisoro, Uganda, to continue the project with students at the Vision Secondary School. A group of eight students selected for this program were given the same One Health lessons as had been taught to the Bronx students, and were given the One Health photo book created by the Lehman HS students to read. Both groups of students were able to zoom and discuss issues of One Health at this time, and the Ugandan students then proceeded to create a photobook with photos and text with One Health instances from their own communities. The project was documented through video during both phases of the project.
The next steps will include sharing the Ugandan photobook with their Bronx counterparts to complete the exchange and for all the students to understand that One Health is universal but manifest in different ways in different cultures.
The Mwezi One project was a collaboration between Kiboko Projects, the Global Health Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Pelham Labs High School in the Bronx, NY, and Kalamba Secondary School, Kenya. Medical students mentored high school students in both the US and Kenya teaching global health, and they also produced a wonderful collection of art. Participation in the project helped to teach about cultural humility by examining different concepts of health held in different cultures.
The project, a bit different from earlier projects, served 9 medical school students, 12 Pelham Labs High School students, and 12 Kalamba Secondary School students, and it lasted for a few months. The purpose of the project was to increase cultural humility for all involved and included the medical students mentoring both the Bronx and the Kenyan high school students. The name, Mwezi One, was created by the Bronx high school students is a Kiswahili word meaning one moon over all of us. The mask-making also became an important component of the project in connecting the students in each group and engaging them in a creative process.
In the workshops, the students made face masks and painted them with images that expressed their feelings, history, culture, and families. After the masks were finished, we used video to capture the stories told by the Kenyan and Bronx students. Photographic portraits of the participants, workshops, and communities were taken to document the project. We worked intensively for the final two weeks in Kenya to create and finish the entire project. When we completed the project, we exhibited the masks at the medical school. The project has evolved into a new program in Uganda in 2023.
A view of the Virunga Mountains from Kisoro, Uganda
Exhibitions enable participants to establish communication with audiences in other countries, breaking down preconceptions about other cultures. They take place in community centers, schools, galleries, and other venues, and are viewed by workshop participants as well as by larger audiences from the community.
Impactful cultural exchange projects using art and storytelling between youth and adult counterparts in the US, Africa, and Russia
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