Art & Global Health Center Africa

AGHCA was founded on the belief that creativity, innovation, collaboration, empowerment, and ownership are key to grass roots social change. Further, AGHCA believes that these key elements can be effectively enhanced, and transferred, through the arts and creative leadership. AGHCA not only runs programs that develop and utilize these key elements, but practices them in the running of the organization. AGHCA was Co-Founded by Dr. Galia Boneh and Shariffa Abdullah as a Malawian Non-Profit organization in July 2013. However, the roots of AGHCA started much earlier. The first program, which marks the genisis of the MAKE ART/STOP AIDS Rural Program (MASA RP), dates back to Zomba, Malawi in 2008, where the production, This is My Story was Co-Directed by Galia Boneh and Iddi Saka. Recognizing the success of this program, and following the completion of her PhD at the University of Los Angeles in California; where the original Art and Global Health Center operates under Dr. David Gere, Dr. Boneh returned to Malawi as a Fulbright Scholar to teach at Chancellor College in 2011. During Dr. Boneh's tenure at Chancellor College, assisted by Shariffa Abdullah, another rendition of the MASA RP was completed in 2011, working directly with the college students. The MASA RP in 2011 sparked a succession of student-led projects which eventually became Students With Dreams (SWD). From SWD many programs continue to develop-growing from embryonic ideas to replicable programs that are now being disseminated across Malawi, and even internationally. The Umunthu Program (UP) for example is a former SWD project. All of the Center's programs are based on the current needs and assets of the communities that build them, focusing on building local leadership. After completing registration in 2013, AGHCA has focused on building capacity as an organization-moving from being programmatically to organizationally based.