Passport Project: Creating Change in Cleveland and Beyond
By Benjamin Szweda

Amidst abandoned houses, closed stores and other signs of decline that some people might consider the norm for Cleveland's Buckeye neighborhood, a small, well-maintained, cheerful green building sits at the corner of East 128th and Buckeye Road. Colorful artwork, created by the neighborhood's children, hangs in the front windows, and within its walls classes in art, dance and computer are given. This small space (only four rooms) meets the needs of children, teens and adults alike and provides a safe place to hang out and learn new skills. The homey, love-filled building is Passport Project's Global Community Arts Center.

Founder Chloë Hopson grew up in a neighborhood on the border of Shaker Heights and East Cleveland. Most of her friends were her neighbors on the east side of Cleveland, even though she attended school in Shaker Heights. Even then Chloë noticed differences in the education and opportunities available to her Shaker Heights classmates versus her Cleveland friends. Those observations, along with the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” inspired Chloë to form Passport Project in 1998 as an outreach program in the Cleveland Municipal School District.

Passport Project is literacy and culture based with an arts-education program designed to provide “exciting experiences that build community” while encouraging respect for diversity and rejecting racism and negative bias. The Project instills a passion for learning and a sense of global community. Chloë, a former educational director for a theater, continues today in this life-changing tradition of the arts by fulfilling her mission for more than 7,000 children and adults each year out of her center.

According to a 2000 Brookings Institution census, Cleveland is the eighth most segregated city in the United States. With this in mind, Chloë says she opened the Global Community Arts Center as “a safe space where visitors are encouraged to explore dance, music and art from various cultures, and to celebrate our heartbeat as the rhythm that connects us all, regardless of ethnicity, religion, socio-economic class or appearance.” At the Center, Passport Project offers low-cost classes in instrumental music, technology (including web design and photography) and more than 12 types of movement arts that range from belly and salsa dancing and yoga, to the more obscure West African movement and Polynesian dance and the locally popular capoeira, a Brazilian marital art.

Passport Project also provides more than a dozen other initiatives such as the School Residency Program that commissions professional artists to work with children in schools and community centers. Through the use of dance, visual art, drama and music, children in the School Residency Program create a script based on a folktale from a particular culture. The chosen culture and curriculum can be adapted to fit the climate of the school or community center, and cul-minates in a performance for the parents and others in the community. In addition to learning about various cultures, students learn the importance of embracing differences in people.

In one of the Project's adult programs, Corporate Diversity Training, private group classes are designed to meet specific needs of a particular company. Held either onsite or at the Center, Passport Project members customize an informational program relating to a specific culture and its respective stereotypes.

Another program, The Global Journey Peace Camp, offers an educational encounter for adolescents ages 8-14 who are invited to study the world through literature, poetry, music theory, the arts and exercise. This program also utilizes music from Europe, both Latin and Native America, West Africa and America.

Chloë believes in Passport Project's mission, saying that that she feels people everywhere can work toward “a more aware, healthy and peaceful society.” She recommends following Ghandi's advice by offering tolerance and acceptance, as well as simply smiling or saying “hello” to strangers. She further challenges us to share stories from our own cultures while also being open to learning from other people about theirs. Chloë says, “All people, no matter what they do for a living, have valuable experiences and talents that can help others.”

Always attempting to follow her own advice, visionary Chloë Hopson is instrumental in creating change. The Passport Project programs are encouraging and empowering all those who pass through the doors of the Global Community Arts Center to consider acceptance and diversity. And because these ideas are so powerful, it is up to each par-ticipant to reach out to others and create the changes he/she wishes to see in the world.

Passport Project Global Community Arts Center is located in East Cleveland at 12801 Buckeye Road. For more information, please visit www.passportproject.org, call (216) 721-1055 or e-mail Chloë@passportproject.org.

Benjamin Szweda can be reached at writerfeedback.bjs@mac.com.