Like many 9-year-olds, Kalie Mapp-Hayes has always enjoyed art, fashion and creativity. Through drawing, Mapp-Hayes said, she has been able to process her own feelings.
“When I was 7 years old and in first grade, I got bullied about my natural hair and the moles on my face,” she said. “I used drawing to calm myself down.”
But unlike most 9-year-olds, Mapp-Hayes is already the CEO of her own foundation.
Mapp-Hayes created the Kreate Your Kourage Foundation two years ago, with her parents as co-founders. The organization focuses on empowering youth and offering them a safe space.
One of Mapp-Hayes’s biggest initiatives within the foundation is weekly art classes, focused around healing and processing emotions.
“Kids come and they learn how to express their emotions by talking, by drawing, and by writing,” she said. “We do art therapy classes. We separate them into groups. Some write, some draw, and some do some affirmations.”
Supporting the community
Kalie’s weekly art classes are held in North Philly’s Logan neighborhood.
“We have 28 people,” she said. “The ages are from 2 to 21.”
From 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, these young people from the community gather to create. Kalie explained there are different ways they can go about expressing their emotions.
“We have little affirmation cards, and we have cards that tell them what to write about or what to draw about, and they draw about those pictures and write about what the card tells them to write about,” she said.
Kalie said she enjoys making a difference. And the community can feel it too, said Jazmine Taylor, whose 15-year-old sister and 4-year-old son attend the weekly classes.
“My son is nonverbal, but I think he has gotten more comfortable talking, and he has lit up,” she said. “He was very in his own self, but now he’s interacting with other kids. He loves painting, loves expressing, and I think he found a way to speak in his artwork.”
Taylor said the classes serve as a family experience – including adults and family members in the experience.
“It’s like a family,” she said. “We sit there and we eat together, we laugh together, and we have a whole conversation.”
Taylor commended Kalie for her work and classes, saying they make exploring her nonverbal son’s emotions a lot easier. She said the experience helps her deal with her own emotions through these challenges as well.
“It’s exhausting because sometimes, you don’t know how he feels that day,” she said. “So sometimes I have a stressful day, and we try to figure it out. But when we go to art therapy, that’s a way that I can put my art and my feelings into it without really snapping out. And we find a way to get to our happy place before we get angry.”
The benefits
The program is beneficial to the parents and guardians, as it provides dinner and a snack for participants, said Mapp-Hayes’ mother, Diane Mapp.
“We want to take that kind of load off the parents, so they don’t have to worry about dinner or anything like that,” she said.
Therapeutic art classes can be beneficial for many reasons, said Natalie Carlton, an associate clinical professor at Drexel University’s Creative Arts Therapies Program.
“The process of making art can be playful, relaxing and help center people in the present tense,” she said. “It can also help people connect to each other and can create activities that people work on in the company of each other.”
Carlton is a licensed art therapist who has worked in the field since 1996, and she shared that a series of graduate-level attainments and certifications must be completed to facilitate professional art therapy groups.
However, she recognized that therapeutic art programs like Kalie’s are important for amplifying art-making that encourages creative processes within communities.
“There’s probably a lot of families connecting to each other,” she said. “The ritual of coming together and creating art in a sort of regular way is a very powerful community builder, especially for communication and relationships.”
Beyond art therapy
The art classes are held at the Kourage House, which is supported by the community nonprofit Bringing Everybody Together (BET).
The Kourage House is just a part of the Kreate Your Kourage community programming, Diane Mapp said.
“Sometimes we have our community partners spread the word,” she said. “We do mobile visits as well, so we’ll visit community partners who have youth. We also do a museum tour. So we do art therapy for their community.”
Diane explained she and Kalie’s father also come from nonprofit backgrounds, which has helped Kalie grow up around the community and find support for her organization.
“She has really grown up under this community-based world that we’re in,” she said. “I’m really heavy on knowing who’s who in your community. Sometimes it’s easy to turn on the news, and you see these big names. But there’s other people that are actually out here making the impact, too, that don’t really get the recognition. And so it’s important for her to know who are her representatives in the community, which legislators are hers, and who’s dealing with youth and families who can help.”
Diane said Kalie was getting bullied in school and struggled to express her emotions about this at first. Once she confided in her parents, the family worked together to come up with a solution.
“I remember her saying that she didn’t want any other kid to feel how she felt, and that we should all be happy with ourselves, and shouldn’t have to change because someone else doesn’t like this,” she said.
“And so I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really powerful for a first grader to say.’ And we were thinking, ‘What can we do for her that can help other people, including the bully?’ We all know that bullies go through things, so maybe the bully has been experiencing some things, and this is their outlet. And so we wanted a safe and healthy outlet.”
Beyond art classes, Kalie hosts workshops at several museums per year, and partners with various community organizations. Diane said this can include anything from partnering with Vetri Community Partnership for cooking classes, to music classes at the Kourage House.
Additionally, Kalie sells other products centered around empowerment – with the proceeds going back into the Kourage House.
“She sells jewelry, clothes, lipstick, pocketbooks and anything that makes someone feel better about themselves or lifts their spirits,” Diane said. “So we do that at different events and all of the proceeds that she gets from selling her items go back into the Kourage House so that we can make sure that all of the kids have the things they need for art supplies and all that kind of stuff.”
Some of Kalie’s products are branded, while others are unique to events.
An author, too
Mapp-Hayes also has a book that extends her message beyond these classes. She said her ultimate goal is helping other kids feel “more confident and beautiful.”
“This book is to let kids know that they are pretty, that they are beautiful, they are handsome, and that they can do anything, if they put their mind to it,” she said.
Diane explained the ultimate goal is to support more programming and materials to help youth with trauma to overcome the obstacles they face.
In the future, Kalie hopes to have her own facility with extended arts programming. She said she also has a Spanish version of her book coming out – and that she hopes to use her bilingual skills to extend her message.
It all sounds like a lot for an elementary school student. Kalie said she is “super happy” to be doing what she is doing.
“I enjoy it really a lot, because it helps me build my courage, and it helps me draw my pictures better as an artist.”