Chavalos de Aquí y Allá
Nicaraguan arts and culture
Chavalos de Aquí y Allá celebrates almost a decade of transnational organizing and local youth development. Chavalos de Aquí y Allá’s goal is to bring together Bay Area youth to form a support system for under resourced youth who live in their local community as well as in Nicaragua. They continue to do this through community outreach, organizing, and by promoting Nicaraguan culture in San Francisco.
Chavalos de Aquí y Allá is committed to providing San Francisco youth and adults with quality professional dance training in Nicaraguan traditional dance. Through their dance program, Chavalos Danzas por Nicaragua, participants learn about the intersectionality between the cultural performing arts and community building.
In 2021, a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grant Program will support the organization’s presentation of several Nicaraguan dance performances in the Mission District of San Francisco, in coordination with Mission Meals Coalition’s food hub distribution events. The performances will include the Walagallo Ritual: the central religious experience of the Garífuna indigenous people of Nicaragua. Both a healing ritual and a cry of unity and protest against injustice, the ritual will display how their ancestors dealt with disease, while also providing an opportunity to share information on how the community can deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
