Signs Of Life get funding from Barclays Bank to visit The Funarte Project in Nicaragua

About a year ago Signs Of Life heard that they had recieved some funding to take some of the members of the group to Esteli in Nicaragua. Barclays Bank came to visit us at The Bromley By Bow Centre in the summer of 2007. They got really excited about our Centre and The Signs Of Life project and generously decided to fund this project. We also found some additional match funding from The Bank Of America. The funding was going to cover the costs for the group to visit and learn about the Funarte Project. Funarte is a project that was set up over 15 years ago by Janet PAvone, Anabell Garcia and Dan Hopewell (the Director of Services at The Bromley By Bow Centre). Funarte are a mural painting group with some similarities to Signs Of Life. 5 young people and two of the artists from Signs Of Life were choosen to go. Over the space of a year the group met and planned, organised, learnt and got excited about this wonderful opportunity.

We would like to sincerely thank Barclays Bank and Bank Of America for providing us with such an incredible opportunity. This project will be life changing for all the participants. Two of the young people in the group did not have passports prior to being invited to join the project.

"What - you mean we are going to fly somewhere on a plane?!" was the response I got from the two of them when we first told them about their participation on the trip.