COMMUNITY ART FACILITATORS TRAINING PROGRAMME
Participants broaden their artistic skills, practice developing art projects for children in need of healing, learn about the human being and its imbalances and gain an understanding of the value of creative development.
The training focuses on empowering participants to be able to implement healing art classes in under-resourced communities.
Over the years our training modules have been refined based on our learning with children and collaboration with others in the development sector.
After completing our entry module, Early Beginnings, participants qualify to become part of our Community Art Facilitators Movement.
Requirements for the completion of a module:
1. Participation in 4 training sessions (24 hours of training) + 2 Mentoring Circles (online of 4.5 hours per circle)
2. Facilitation of learned skills with a group of at least 7 children from a vulnerable community (of the trainee’s choice) for a minimum of 24 hours. Or participants can fulfill an internship at a BAP-approved site of 24 hours (8 weeks of 3 hours each)
3. Monitoring and evaluation of community work as taught in training module/s
4. Submission of a Portfolio of Practice Workbook (including learnings/reflections, artworks and photographic evidence).
NB: Before applying, kindly see the video below on how to become a CAF
Training Module Descriptions 2025
Early Beginnings
Entry module
Early Beginnings
(Entry Module)
The aim of the Counteracting Trauma Module is to provide Community Art Facilitators (CAFs) with the skills they need to work more effectively with children from challenged households. Challenged households are those experiencing high levels of stress and often dysfunction due to poverty and related social ills such as substance abuse and gender based violence. Children living in these households experience a high level of stress and often witness or experience trauma. This module provides CAFs with tools they can use to assist these children to heal and stabilise through art.
Building sustainability in my CAF practice
This module introduces participants to the concept of generating sustainable art materials, innovating resources, while developing and celebrating your creative self. Each participant will walk away with innovative ideas on how to generate income and how to grow their individual programmes. Through this effective process, participants will discover new ways of resolving challenges and be inspired by a new way of thinking. Participants will understand the basics of business in the NGO sector and explore fundraising opportunities to enable sustainability and self-reliance relevant to their programme. This is great workshop if you need to boost yourself and your programme to the next level.
Counteracting trauma
The aim of the Counteracting Trauma Module is to provide Community Art Facilitators (CAFs) with the skills they need to work more effectively with children from challenged households. Challenged households are those experiencing high levels of stress and often dysfunction due to poverty and related social ills such as substance abuse and gender based violence. Children living in these households experience a high level of stress and often witness or experience trauma. This module provides CAFs with tools they can use to assist these children to heal and stabilise through art.
Building Resilience in my CAF practice
This module aims to assist adults in becoming socially and emotionally competent and self-aware. Participants learn to grow their emotional capability and assess their strengths and weaknesses while learning to generate positive emotions in order to motivate learning both within themselves as well as the children they work with. When participants have a combined competency in all eight social and emotional areas (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, goal-directed behaviour, responsible decision making and optimistic thinking) they are equipped with the skills to create safe classroom environments that encourage optimum social and emotional development in the children they serve.
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Love Bugs Induction (online)
In the Love Bugs Induction Module we take all we learnt in the Counteracting Trauma Module to the next level. In this module CAFs will learn how to start a Love Bugs Model Programme in their communities to stabilise severely neglected children not in school. The module will explore all the aspects of the Love Bugs Model from recruitment to curriculum development. CAFs will learn how to effectively engage with parents/guardians, partners and state organisations to support children beyond a Love Bugs Model Programme. CAFs will also learn how to complete and submit a 22A Form to refer children's cases to DSD. This module will also be of benefit to CAFs who wish to include severely neglected children not in school into their afterschool programmes.
Training workshop Descriptions 2025
Youth: Sexual Orientation & Gender identity AND MENTAL HEALTH LITERACY
Gain a clear understanding of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) and how to foster inclusivity in classrooms. Learn the language of LGBTQIA+ and how to advocate for safe spaces. Become comfortable working with Mental Health Literacy. Develop an understanding of the common disorders and explore resources to support mental health. Empower yourself with tools to create safe environments and enhance mental health awareness in youth. Join us for a transformative workshop on nurturing inclusivity and well-being when working with youth.
Workshop 2 content coming soon
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Workshop 3 content coming soon
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Workshop 4 content coming soon
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Workshop 5 content coming soon
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Trainings and Workshops Collection/Vault:
This is a practical handbook for planning and establishing an art-based community centre. This guide provides an overview of the key aspects that would need to be considered when planning to offer art classes and/ or start an art centre to a local community. Our handbook focuses predominantly on starting an art centre as a non-profit, including some information on what to consider should it be decided to run an art centre as a profitable pursuit. This module is shared with CAF’s as an on-line self-help reference guide; and BAP programme staff are available to those who use this resource to assist and mentor them as they implement this challenging but needed activity.
How to start a community Art Centre
In this workshop participants will be introduced to paint making. The facilitator will share the insights to create the best quality oil, acrylic, watercolour, egg-tempera and casein paint. During the workshop participants will paint with the different mediums to get an idea of their usage and enjoy the brightness of pure paint.
Paint Making
In this workshop participants will discuss what we mean by play. Participants will look at children's play through different lenses. Participants will also look at play throughout the stages of childhood and possibly beyond! This workshop includes some experiential learning and discussions in the group as well as theoretical input.
Childplay in different age groups
This workshop is designed to explore and understand trauma, the different types that affect our country, how children respond to it and how we can best support them as facilitators. Participants will explore how distress leads to depression, working with different stages of trauma and the responses to them and which models for child-focused trauma interventions can be implemented.
Trauma in Childhood
In this workshop participants will receive an introduction to form drawing and the importance of practicing this activity with children. Participants will explore the development of the ‘sense of movement’ to create a sense of balance and stability for children using form drawing activities. The aim is to use tools and methods in the classroom for children aged 6 to 12, although they could be valuable for older students too.
Form Drawing
This module trains CAFs how to teach different disciplines in craft including embroidery, felting, sewing, knitting, weaving and crochet inspired by Waldorf education. The rhythmic and repetitive tasks needed in these activities are proven to have therapeutic benefits and improve mental health and emotional wellbeing. The practice of sewing increases serotonin production and increases a natural state of mindfulness. CAFs also learn the importance of craft and possible projects for children of primary school age.
Handcraft
In this workshop participants will learn about community mapping, a process that brings community members together to identify available resources in their communities that can address their own needs. Throughout the workshop, participants will acquire skills that will enable them to identify all available essential services in their communities and put them together to create a useful resource map.
Community Mapping
This workshop will use creative writing and pastel drawing processes to enable participants to look at polarities and evoke inner empathy. The participants will learn how to better understand the feelings and inner experiences of others; understanding how to practice true empathy for good relationship building and resolving conflict.
Empathy Pastel and Journaling
Participants will be introduced to the 12 Senses according to Rudolph Steiner’s lectures and studies. They will develop tools to understand and work towards re-balancing traumatised children through appropriate artistic exercises.
Beyond the 5 senses - Understanding our 12 senses and healing
In this module participants discover how to form relationships between individuals in artistic group exercises for the greater good of society. Groups can bond through creative artistic interaction. Participants are given practical experience in group facilitation, how to understand group productivity, and how to read group dynamics. They are provided with the tools needed for designing and implementing activities for group problem-solving in challenging times.
Creative Interaction
This workshop will focus on giving participants an understanding of the factors that affect children's development and identifying children with special needs: attention deficit difficulties, learning difficulties, autistic spectrum difficulties and fetal alcohol syndrome. An artistic activity will also be done to help develop empathy and understanding for participants to better deal with challenges.
Paint Making
Child Development
In this workshop, participants will learn how to create Waldorf dolls and items using the art of needle and handcraft. Participants will also be provided with a presentation around sewing as a tool for therapy and learn how to create toys for their classroom spaces such as bean bags, play cloths and season table decorations.
Toy Making
This workshop is designed to illustrate how the human biography follows archetypal patterns – rhythms we find in all human’s life. In this workshop we will explore the signatures of the seven-year cycles, apply it to your own biography using art as a medium and deepen your understanding of the art therapeutic needs of children and youth age 0-21.
My Life Journey and Art Therapy- the seven year cycles
This workshop will focus on the relationship between adults and children. How does the small child learn what it is to be human? What is the role of imitation in the first seven years.? We will explore these questions together through artistic processes, conversations, social activities and bringing the participants insights, concerns and questions to this important topic.
Relationship between adult and child
This workshop is about making space for grief and loss, learning to understand what grief is, and what are the stages that grief brings. This workshop will help you to understand and normalise grief and loss with more compassion. We cannot push grief away but we can treat it with kindness and acceptance
Bereavement: working through grief and loss
In this workshop, participants will learn about the elements of therapeutic storytelling. Stories have the ability to help with challenging behaviour and difficult situations. Participants will hear different examples of healing stories and together with the facilitator, they will create their own healing stories for the children they work with.
Therapeutic Storytelling
The fascinating Fourfold Nature of the human being will be discovered in this workshop. The process will help participants' understanding of the children they teach, so they can provide them with relevant healing art activities.
Fourfold human Being
In this workshop, participants will learn how to plot their ideas for short term projects, using visuals and poster making and mapping out the activities to see the project’s success. Participants will be enabled on how to develop a project from ideation to implementation and execution of tasks using tested tools within the Butterfly Art Project.
Project planning
How to Become an Effective Mentor (24 hr Module)
This module aims to provide both practical and theoretical knowledge and skills for effective mentoring, at a community level. You will receive guidance in developing the qualities of a mentor, understanding the process of mentoring, practising the tools we use for mentoring and understanding the importance of monitoring the development of mentees. The shared methodology is based on the idea of self-discovery and development for both mentor and mentee.