Since its formation 3 years ago, PYE has grown and evolved in exciting and unexpected ways.  We are now working in partnership with communities in seven countries to bring what we know about creativity and arts-based youth engagement to enhance their work with youth.

In our travels we have met thousands of practitioners representing hundreds of organizations around the world doing incredible work, looking for new ways to develop their creativity and facilitation skills and to connect to their counterparts in different countries (and we know there are more where they came from!).  We began to see a ripe opportunity to connect the dots in this fragmented field so that we can share, exchange and collaborate to strengthen arts-based transformative youth work across the globe.

So we started looking for expertise to help us in our quest to develop ourselves as a socially engaging brand and create new spaces where we can interact and grow our community.  Enter Visceral Business, leaders in developing socially engaging brands and authors of the Social 100 Charities Index (which is a must read for Charities in the same quest as PYE – available at http://visceralbusiness.com/). We went back to the origins of PYE – our mission to awaken the purpose, power and possibility in young people” and defined 4 values that we feel underpin all of our work: resourcefulness, creative energy, authentic community and inspiring others.  Visceral Business hooked us up with Brightspark Creative who translated these new brand elements into a visual identity that you now see in our logo and website.

We still have work to do – we will be launching the community space on the website in the coming weeks – so watch this space!

We invite you to join us – there are now more ways to engage with PYE – join us for a training, connect into PYE’s international of network of practitioners, and share the important work you do.   Let us know your impressions and feedback on our new brand and website – we would love to hear from you.

Dream A Dream is an award-winning charity in Bangalore India that provides critical life skills training to children from vulnerable backgrounds.  Their own dream is to equip 240,000 children with essential life skills over the next five years. They chose PYE’s Creative Community Model as a key piece in their strategy to scale.

“Our new partnership with PYE has come at a critical juncture to help us achieve our vision,” says Vishal Talreja, Co-Founder and CEO Dream A Dream and Ashoka Fellow.  “PYE Global’s Creative Community Model has enabled us to train our staff, build sound principles of engagement, and create a scaleable, replicable model for life skills development for our organization.”

In November and December 2011, PYE senior trainer Nadia Chaney led trainings for DAD staff and partner organisations skilling them up to lead programs based on the Creative Community Model and train others.  She supported DAD staff as they led a camp for 34 youth based on the Creative Community Model. She worked with the DAD to develop an arts-based curriculum for teaching life-skills.

Watch the 3-minute film Agrifirma Youth Camp Sept 2011