ArtCares for Kids

ArtCares for Kids is a Miami-based nonprofit organization serving children in medical settings dealing with psychological, emotional and physical challenges. Our dedicated volunteers understand the benefits of nurturing children through the creative process of art and strive to provide art as a therapeutic and healing tool.

Children with cancer describe the effects of treatment as exhausting and weakening. Chemotherapy makes them feel sad, tired, and scared, taking a tremendous toll, not only on their physical wellbeing but their emotional lives.

“Art provides a nonverbal way for children to express their feelings and traumas. It helps them assert their individuality and prevent their illness from defining who they are,” says Clinical Art Therapist Liz Portuondo, who along with Tania Quintana and Dorian Rosen founded ArtCares for Kids in 2010 to help children in the Pediatric Oncology and Transplant units at Jackson Memorial’s Holtz Children Hospital.

Using different mediums and art directives, ArtCares volunteers create a positive environment where children affected by challenging, traumatic experiences and/or life-threatening diseases can safely express their feelings about the world around them, and provide a welcome diversion from their surroundings. Through ArtCares, the children have the opportunity to be transported, even if only temporarily, from a place of darkness and chaos to a place of beauty and color. This feeling of wellness empowers the child and in turn has a residual effect.

Learn more at www.ArtCaresForKids.org