The Collective Culture Presents the Apollo Theater’s Stage Adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Critically Acclaimed Between the World and Me at Atlanta Symphony Hall Oct. 22, 2019
National Black Arts (NBAF) is honored and proud to announce a new sponsor partnership with Northside Hospital. Northside Hospital will be supporting NBAF’s Move/Dance! and Dancing with Seniors Programs with a generous $40,000 contribution for the 2020-2021 school year.
The Move/Dance! Program was established by NBAF as part of its Adopt-A-School Program. It brings much needed arts education and physical education back into local Atlanta middle schools. The program provides teaching artists who instruct various dance forms from the 18th to the 21st centuries. They also instruct classroom etiquette and act as mentors and role models. Their lessons are based on a curriculum highlighting Black dance developed by NBAF to match the Atlanta School system’s curriculum standards and goals. The Move/Dance! Program is located in three middle schools, Sylvan Hills Middle School, King Middle School, and Bunche Middle School and serves nearly 1,000 low income students. In 2020, NBAF in partnership with Atlanta Public Schools, provided virtual Google Classroom programming for all of its youth development and health initiatives.
The Move/ Dance! Program encourages and nurtures the talent and the aspirations of middle school students while supporting the school, parents and guardians with their academic as well as their health and wellness goals. Through this initiative, NBAF combines the creative arts with the goal of addressing prevalent health issues such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and other conditions that plague our communities. Move/Dance! is also an interventionist Program because of the focus on improving the health and wellness of the students, and by extension their families, through fun dance lessons that support movement and exercise. As 95% of the youth served in this program are African American, it is reported that a higher margin of these students suffer from diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. Overwhelmingly, the dance/exercise program has improved the health disparities of the students. The Program also promotes educational enrichment and learning with the classroom experience, teaching the rich history of Black dance and the dancers, choreographers and dance companies that have paved the way.
In addition, the Northside/ NBAF partnership will also support “Dancing with Seniors”, a health initiative focused on providing seniors with wellness education and exercise through dance. NBAF is serving over 125 seniors at Truitt Camp and Helene Senior Centers through this entertaining dance and wellness class. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NBAF has re-branded the program to “Zoomba with Seniors” and with digital support of the Zoom platform, the seniors engage in the virtual dance wellness classes from the safety of their own space. Participating seniors have become more agile, have had less incidents of falling, lowered their BMI readings, and feel more alert and attentive.
With Northside Hospital’s sponsorship, NBAF will have the ability to expand both programs. The goal is to replicate the Move/Dance! Program throughout the Atlanta Public Middle Schools and Elementary Schools. The program will continue to expand and focus on addressing the needs of the whole child – supporting, nurturing, expanding and improving their creativity, talent, knowledge, academics and health.
NBAF’s Managing Director, Stephanie Owens, shared “NBAF is beyond excited to build upon our current relationship with Northside Hospital as we grow and evolve the Move/ Dance! And Dancing with Seniors Programs through their generous support and partnership. These two programs closely align with Northside Hospital’s mission and strategic initiatives focused on preventative health services and healthy lifestyle behaviors. We are thrilled to continue this important work with Northside, impacting our communities and improving the health of those that we serve.”
“It’s impossible to adequately describe the importance of National Black Arts and what it has meant to the people of Atlanta,” said Lee Echols, vice president of marketing at Northside Hospital. “NBAF’s impact as a legacy organization gives it both gravitas as well as cultural legitimacy. Northside Hospital believes this partnership will provide enormous benefit to our employees, our patients and their families – all while changing the lives of Atlanta’s young people and senior citizens.”
Northside Hospital is committed to the health and wellness of the community. As such, they dedicate themselves to being a center of excellence in providing high-quality health care. They pledge compassionate support, personal guidance and uncompromising standards to patients in their journeys toward health of body and mind. To ensure innovative and unsurpassed care for patients, they are dedicated to maintaining their position as regional leaders in select medical specialties. To enhance the wellness of the community, they commit themselves to providing a diverse array of educational and outreach programs.
For more information, visit the NBAF website, NBAF.org.
About Northside Hospital
The Northside Hospital health care system is one of Georgia’s leading health care providers with five acute-care hospitals in Atlanta, Canton, Cumming, Duluth and Lawrenceville and more than 250 outpatient locations across the state. Northside Hospital leads the U.S. in newborn deliveries and is among the state’s top providers of cancer care, sports medicine, cardiovascular and surgical services. For more information, visit: northside.com.
