Artists for Africa is a charity celebrating its tenth anniversary next year, an unlikely milestone given how it was conceived by a rather extraordinary woman called Cooper Rust and ably supported by her extended friends and family back home in Carolina in the US.
Cooper Rust was a professional ballerina who trained all over the US including New York, Florida, Milwaukee and Connecticut but primarily in her home state of South Carolina. Her career extended from Columbia, South Carolina to Las Vegas, Nevada and all the way to Santa Barbara, California.
Of all the millions of boys and girls taking ballet classes around the world, only a tiny fraction will dance professionally, so Cooper Rust really was living the dream.
In her mid-twenties and between dance seasons, she visited Kenya on holiday, but not for the safari like most tourists but with a view to giving some ballet classes for Kenyan kids in Nairobi. ‘Giving back’ as Cooper describes it but ‘giving plenty and above and beyond’ is much more accurate.
Our Brothers Trust visit to meet Cooper and the kids back in 2019 in Nairobi Kenya. (Independently funded by ourselves.)
Her stay in Nairobi was scheduled to last a couple of months but things took an unexpected turn when Cooper saw and began to understand the positive impact her classes were having on the children. She extended her stay and promptly founded Artists for Africa.
Almost ten years on, Cooper remains in Nairobi running this worthy and life changing charity. Immigration is a hot topic and is always highly politically charged. Millions of people are constantly on the move and looking to leave their countries for pastures new and America is cited at the Holy Grail where most people dream of arriving. On the other hand, few people make this journey in reverse. Leaving America for places like Nairobi and just one of the reasons why Cooper is so special.
Working largely alone, Cooper is a force of nature, hurdling all obstacles in her way. Using her words again; begging, stealing and borrowing from kind benefactors from across the globe on behalf of some of the poorest kids on earth.
Artists for Africa provide free classes to over 1000 kids from the slums of Nairobi. Classes in drama, music, art, dance and ballet and in doing so, providing vital employment for local teachers.
As well as these free classes, Artists for Africa has also established a boarding house for students from the slums who are identified as having exceptional potential. This is really like a lottery win for these kids to go from a literal slum to living in a home with running water, central heating, beds, furniture and all the things that we consider normal.
And this is not all. Cooper not only enrolls these children in her professional dance classes (which are attended by predominantly middle class Kenyan children) but they also receive a full-time education in the American school system and curricula. An education that Cooper received and which has served her so well.
From the original boarding house (Cooper’s tiny two bedroom Nairobi apartment) Joel Kioko won a scholarship to the English National Ballet in London where he spent four years training and is now a professional dancer in Chicago. Right there, a real life Billy Elliot story!
Meeting up with Joel this month in New York
Frances Waweru is studying lighting and theatre design at Cameron University in Oklahoma and Lawrence Ogina who enrolled as an engineering student with a double major in dance at the University of South Carolina and Lavender Orisa has been given a full scholarship to attend the year round program at The English national ballet school.
Lavender Orisa
Frances Waweru
Lawrence Ogina teaching kids in The Good Samaritan School on our visit to Kenya.
Since the Brothers Trust began to support Artists for Africa, Cooper has been able to move to a larger premises and can now house up to a dozen talented children.
It is impossible to reconcile the opportunities for these kids with their background without the work of Artists for Africa and all because of the kindness and industry of their surrogate mother, Cooper Rust.
Honouring her work, Cooper is the current Alumna of the Year of the University of Nevada which she intends to mine for any opportunities for the kids in her charge. Cooper uses all her contacts in the States and her guile to secure support and opportunities for her kids. She was also recently honored by receipt of a Global Community Teaching Award from the Royal Academy of Dance during their 100th Anniversary year.
Artists for Africa is entirely self-funding. Almost all funds are from generous individual benefactors. Some large donors but mostly small. Support from ordinary American families who have encountered the children either in Kenya or on their visits to Cooper’s home in South Carolina and on seeing the results that she accomplishes.
Work which is transformative and not just for the likes of Joel who can establish professional careers in the arts.
But for the 1000s of kids who sleep on floors in mud huts and no services. Kids who love to dance and to create and to have an outlet from the daily grind of their reality.
There is a line in Billy Elliot which is apt for this short tale.
‘We can’t all be dancers.’
Which is true, of course. But Artists for Africa is not trying to find the next Billy Elliot. Or the first Kenyan Rudolph Nureyev. Artists for Africa is not a talent agency. They are all about working on the ground to provide a diversion and opportunities for young children to smile and to learn and to do all the things that we did growing up.
By supporting The Brothers Trust, you are part of making Artists for Africa viable, so thank you.