The SOuL Project Caught on Video!

It has been underway for months and it is already producing some extremely powerful stuff. Some SOuL Project participants in the Calhoun County area were given the opportunity to perform at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in December of 2011. Take a look at some powerful footage from the experience.

One student’s name is Felipe. We didn’t remember him when we first saw him, but he certainly remembered us. He said he had seen us at the Calhoun County Juvenile Home when we came there to perform and share our stories for the juvenile population. And it was there that he was accidentally given one of our CDs upon his release. We had no idea what an impact that CD had made on his life already, and we barely knew him. Then we reconnected at one of our workshop sites. Now here he is, a product of the SOuL Project, performing for some of the most important members of the community at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in downtown Battle Creek. Hear his words and truly listen. What he shares are reminders that we may believe we are here to heal the broken, but Speak It Forward dares to believe that it is the broken who are here to heal us. Take a listen:

Funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Battle Creek Community Foundation and private funders, the SOuL Project has been digging into the community and sweeping up the students who are sometimes left behind. Workshops are targeting several locations in the Calhoun County area, including the Calhoun County Juvenile Home, the Urban League of Battle Creek and the Summit Pointe Virtual Learning Center. Those places in combination with on-going connections in the home and electronically, Kirk Latimer and <Gabriel Giron are able to make life-long connections and impacting changes. This work will culminate into two powerful final performances, one at the Urban League’s annual “I Have a Dream” banquet and the other at the Kellogg Auditorium for the culminating SOuL Project presentation(TBD late February).

At the SOuL Presentation, Speak It Forward will be featuring music, student voices and powerful new performance pieces by Kinetic Affect that remind us to embrace life not regardless of the struggle, but in fact, because of it.

Oh, and be sure to read the amazing front page article on this performance from the Battle Creek Enquirer at: http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20111203/NEWS01/112030307/The-Michigan-Poem-Kinetic-Affect