ChezaCheza was founded as an innovative solution to the rising mental health issues in communities and schools, resulting in declining student and teacher well-being, rising rates of out-of-school children, school violence, learner disengagement and early school leaving, heavy workloads for teachers and students, and teacher burnout and shortages.
ChezaCheza effectuates profound changes in students' mental health and well-being by integrating a dance therapy curriculum within the schooling ecosystem. Drawing on our love for dance and understanding its therapeutic effectiveness, we crafted a unique solution: combining dance movement therapy with social-emotional learning and mindfulness meditation. ChezaCheza adopts an innovative, community-centric approach whereby it identifies and trains talented dancers from concerned disadvantaged communities to become Community-Based Dance Coaches (CBDCs)—equipping them with context-sensitive dance therapy skills, counselling techniques, and child safety protocols. CBDC deliver weekly therapeutic dance sessions while fortifying children's coping strategies and driving the mental health and well-being narrative in a fresh, fun way. They also deliver training to upskill teachers to deliver parts of the ChezaCheza curriculum in their classrooms.
ChezaCheza Dance Foundation has enacted a model that capitalizes on community strength to uplift and support the next generation of learners. To achieve our goal of mental health transformation in schools and communities, we employ the following tactics:
1. Local Engagement: Our initial step towards achieving scale involves identifying and training local dancers in each community in which we work.
2. Community Mapping: We start our project expansion by mapping new frontier areas. This involves site visits in marginalised urban regions and identifying potential coaches for our programs.
3. Partnerships: We are creating partnerships with schools to integrate our curriculum within their framework — thus making our dance therapy curriculum more accessible within the school.
Reach out to our ChezaCheza team and start the dance journey with us