What is the Create2Grow Program?
About
The Create2Grow program is a fun and flexible eight-week arts-based adventure designed for children aged 8 to 12 in under-resourced communities who might have mild learning or developmental challenges. In 2023, in De Doorns, Western Cape, the program showed fantastic results: kids not only improved in their performance of daily activities, but they also became more creative and engaged during groups.
Parents and caregivers found the program extremely valuable and practical, suggesting it’s a great fit for schools in similar communities. Our goal was to make sure this program was both effective and easy to implement, and the data shows us that Create2Grow has the potential to make a real difference in children’s lives.
The program helps children feel more confident and connected, improving their ability to learn, make friends, and handle everyday tasks. It focuses on building a range of important skills like visual perception, fine motor skills, social interaction, executive functioning, and emotional intelligence, all while encouraging kids to take an active role in their own growth and success. Overall, the groups are designed to offer children a safe and creative space defined by nurturing interactions where participants have an opportunity to achieve and have their engagement in the process of art-making celebrated above their ‘performance’.
What does it take?
2 nurturing and accepting facilitators
(with a good understanding of the AR3T Principles discussed in the training)
Work space for 8 children
(within a trusted children’s centre, school or practice)
Consent to work with children from primary caregivers
Create2Grow manual and resources
A playful attitude!
A place where process is valued over product.
Building resilience and hope through Just-right challenges.
Your Low-Cost Key to Promoting Developmental Success for All
What makes Create2Grow Resource-effective?
In low-resource settings, there are a myriad of factors hindering families’ access to quality paediatric interventions for children with learning and developmental differences. According to van Zyl C., et al. (2021), the factors that characterise a low-resource setting are multi-faceted:
Create2Grow is a resource-effective therapy solution for low-resource settings as it:
Caters for the lack of context-conscious services by being refined according to caregivers’ perspectives regarding feasibility and value through research and community interactions.
Utilises group therapy, thereby overcoming human resource limitations by ensuring that more children benefit from therapeutic support without the high costs and time demands of individual sessions. It also decentralises occupational therapy, empowering teachers, parents, and community members—who are socially skilled and motivated—to lead these groups as a supportive intervention.
Considers financial limitations by reducing therapy costs to R18.00 per child per group if the initial Create2Grow Box is refilled twice for three groups (24 children).
Fosters resourcefulness and initiative amongst children by teaching them to repurpose recycled materials!
