KAM/CARES

With the purpose of enhancing the quality of education for public school students in the greater Koreatown/South Central area, the museum launched the outreach program KAM/CARES (Korean American Museum Community Arts Resources and Education Services) with the aid of grants from the Weingart and ARCO Foundations, in the spring of 1997.

The pilot program in 1997 involved 130 fourth and fifth grade students from Berendo Middle School and student teachers from UCI. Since then, KAM/CARES, with the participation of student leaders from the campuses of both UCI and USC and junior high school students from the Forshay Learning Center, has continued its goal to promote the arts and cultural resources in the community to area youth.

The program encourages cultural diversity by bringing art to the students through the employment of visual arts projects related to depictions of cultural identity and through the exploration of multicultural concepts by way of tours of local museums, tours of private art studios, and artist-led workshops. At the same time the KAM/CARES program believes that a shared learning experienced between both college student mentors and middle school students can further accentuate the idea that art, in its role as a communicator of cultures, remains an integral part of today's mulicultural society.