Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona

Free Arts Mission: Transforming children’s trauma to resilience through the arts.

Vision: Every child who has experienced the trauma of abuse, neglect, and/or homelessness has access to resilience-building arts programs and caring adult volunteer mentors.

Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona is a nonprofit organization who serves children in Maricopa County who have experienced the trauma of abuse, neglect, and homelessness. Free Arts’ art with intention program model, Art + Mentors = Resilience, helps children build the resilience they need to overcome trauma by connecting them with caring adults and creative activities that develop their skills and sense of self. Our mission is transforming children's trauma to resilience through the arts. 

Free Arts believes that healthy connections with adults create change. Through partnerships with local child welfare agencies, Free Arts is able to provide this intervention to children free of cost to program participants.

Prolonged childhood trauma can adversely affect brain development, the immune system, and hormonal systems of children. In fact, this type of adversity can even triple the chance of heart disease and lung cancer overall resulting in a 20-year difference in life expectancy. Through our programs we help children develop transferrable skills for any challenge and a sense of self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to succeed. In this way, we can mitigate the long-term effects of childhood trauma and equip these children with the coping tools and life skills necessary to live healthy and productive lives as adults.

Free Arts for Abused Children of Arizona serves more than 7,000 children, on average, each year through six key trauma-informed programs and one special project (you can learn more about our Programs in the tab above).