NATALIE MERCHANT BACKYARD BENEFIT CONCERT

STREET POETS SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN GLOBAL XCHANGE IN SOUTH AFRICA & NORTHERN IRELAND!

January 7, 2010 - Los Angeles - Andres Rivera, Street Poets' community outreach coordinator and teaching artist, will be representing our organization in the British Council and VSO's Global XChange Program in Durban, South Africa from January 17 to February 6 and in Belfast, Northern Ireland from March 7 to 27.

The upcoming program marks two firsts: Global XChange's first multilateral team and the first project in which Americans will participate. In Durban and Belfast, Andres will join four other Los Angeles community activists and peers from the UK, France, South Africa, Sierra Leone and Rwanda to observe local organizations, exchange best practices and explore cross-cultural approaches to serving at-risk youth.

"I'm excited to share Street Poets' unique healing medicine with the world," Andres says, "and I'm looking forward to learning more about how other cultures are approaching youth violence prevention and intervention."

The Durban and Belfast exchanges will be followed by a six-month youth exchange beginning in June. Street Poets will be nominating one of our youth to join a group of 18-24 year-olds from each country who will live and volunteer for three months in Durban, followed by three months in Belfast.

To follow Andres on his travels, visit his blog at http://globalxchange.tumblr.com and follow Andres' URL: http://andresrivera.tumblr.com

STREET POETS Inc. is a poetry-based peace-making organization dedicated to the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation.

1. TO INSPIRE at-risk youth in the juvenile detention facilities, schools and streets of Los Angeles County to discover and develop their voices as writers, artists and human beings.

2. TO EMPOWER these young people to use the skills and increased self-awareness engendered through the arts to transcend self-destructive lifestyles.

3. TO CREATE a healing community that unites different racial, ethnic and socioeconomic segments of our city around the transformational power of the creative process.

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