Unity Charity

Unity Charity uses Hip Hop to improve young people's lives creating healthier communities. Unity runs free programs for youth age 12-24 in the art forms of Bboying / Bgirling, Graffiti Art, Spoken Word Poetry, MCing, and Beat Boxing. Since 2007, Unity has impacted the lives of over 200,000 young people across Canada, and provided meaningful employment for hundreds of emerging artist educators.

Photo of Unity Charity by Sean Howard

 

We spoke with Mike Prosserman, Founder and Executive Director of Unity Charity, to learn more about the organization.

Describe the work you do.

Unity uses hip hop to empower young people with the confidence and skills for success. We use the elements of hip hop - breaking, spoken word, graffiti, beat boxing, MCing, DJing - to give young people to tools to live successful lives.

What impact does Unity Charity have on the youth it serves?

Our goal is to make young people feel like they are part of a community that’s bigger than them, that’s bigger than Unity. Our goal is to help young people feel like they have positive ways to express their stress and their anger through art and hip hop, to give them an outlet in their lives. Similar to my own story and so many artists that we meet, we’re looking for different ways to express what’s inside of us, and hip hop is that universal language.

Why is it important to engage youth through the arts?

It’s important to engage young people through the arts because every young person engages in different ways. Some young people love sports, some young people love cooking, some young people don’t know what they love. Unity is providing another option that young people probably wouldn’t have had in their local community. We’re providing hip hop, (breaking, spoken word, graffiti, beat boxing), right at their front door, down the street, in their community center, at their school.  

The Arts for Youth Award is supported by a number of individuals, including Martha Burns, Jim Fleck, and Sandra and Jim Pitblado. They support this award because they believe in the power of engaging youth through the arts. What would you say to these individuals if you met them today?

I would definitely say, thank you for supporting the arts. I think what we need to do is convince 20 more Jim Fleck’s out there to do the same. I think every one of those people are leading by example, and the more people in our community that value the arts and realize the importance of the arts, the more there will be a ripple effect. So, not only thank you, but please keep sharing the story of what you’re doing in ways that will bring other people on board.

What does it mean to you to be nominated for the Arts For Youth Award?

For me, awards are just things, and things that are not necessarily in and of themselves important. However, it’s more about getting the message out there to people about the importance of the arts. I always get awkward when it comes to awards, because first of all, it’s not just me who is behind this thing, there’s so many other people representing Unity: the staff, the artists, the board members, the volunteers, the youth, the parent communities. I feel that it’s important to get the world out there about programs like Unity, because we’re bombarded with all the wrong messages these days, and we need more positive messages about what’s happening in the community. 

Explain your UNITY’s mantra: Do what you love, love what you do.

Do what you love, love what you do is something that I personally live by. Unity is not something that is just about the arts. Unity is about empowering young people to achieve something that they love in life, and ideally do that throughout their entire lives. This is a rare thing in the world. As I meet young people who have graduated from Unity, they’re always seeking to do something that’s meaningful, but that can also make them money. This is sort of the beautiful marriage of all of the elements that we look for in life, and Unity wants to encourage that. It’s not an overnight process, it’s not something that just happens, it’s something that you have to be constantly chasing, constantly be working for. There’s a lot of work ethic and discipline behind it.

What’s the power of hip hop to ones self-expression and creativity? Why is hip hop a powerful tool for engaging youth?

Hip hop is an incredibly powerful tool because number one, it’s free. The beautiful thing about hip hop is that it’s 100% accessible and available within your own body and within your own group of friends. Another reason why hip hop is so powerful, is because it’s a community. A lot of young people don’t feel like they’re part of a community, and when they connect to the hip hop community, they feel like they’re part of something bigger than them. That to me is why hip hop is so powerful, because it’s bigger than any one person; it’s an international movement, and if you just connect to it in the smallest way, you plug into all of these networks all over the world, within your own community, within Canada, within Ontario, within Toronto. Hip hop is a universal language, and it’s accessible to everyone.

Can you talk about Unity’s commitment to addressing mental health through your programs?

Mental health is very important to me personally because of some experiences I had with my family as I grew up, as well as current situations that I’m working through. I realized that Unity was always dealing with mental health, we just never really called it out. It’s important because no one talks about it, and at the end of the day that is very harmful. The people in my family told me never to talk about it, and for that reason, it isolated me and it isolated them. But now, the more I talk about it, the more I get support from the right people in the right ways. The community that hip hop creates, the support network, is huge for maintaining positive mental health in your life. Having friends that you can trust and talk to, feeling like you’re connected to something, and having positive ways to express your stress: these are all elements that build resiliency in young people. We just want to start opening a conversation that makes it socially appropriate to talk about mental health.  

Learn more: unitycharity.com