HEAL (Helping Everyone Accept Love), a community outreach organization that uses art to promote peace, is holding its second creative arts showcase this weekend in Arnold.
The event, called HEAL 2015 Vol. 2, is open to the public and will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22, at Rickman Auditorium on the Fox schools campus, 745 Jeffco Blvd., in Arnold.
Singers, dancers and poets will perform, and painters will be on hand creating art, said Tiffiney Mills, who founded the HEAL group.
“The arts are very therapeutic, and I felt like kids need a visual picture of how to channel emotions and to see a picture of multicultural unity and love, and the arts can provide that,” Mills said. “I know the arts have always been that for me.”
Speakers also will participate, including Lisa Wallace of Arnold and Ron Sutton of Festus.
“They will bring a message of hope and love and will uplift and encourage people,” Mills said.
In addition, HEAL will give out backpacks filled with school supplies, clothes and shoes, and bags of groceries.
“We know about the people (in Jefferson County) affected by all the flooding, so we want to help them,” Mills said. “We want to give them groceries for a week. And even though school has already started, we know there are children who don’t have backpacks and school supplies.”
Walgreens will offer free health screenings, and the Paul Mitchell beauty school in St. Louis will have volunteers there providing free haircuts and manicures, she said.
Mills said she is tired of the negativity surrounding St. Louis that has been on the news over the past year, so she decided to do something about it and formed HEAL, a nonprofit organization.
“It’s a movement that brings about healing by combining the creative arts, love in action (outreach) and speakers with a powerful message of hope,” she says on the group’s website and Facebook page. “Love has no color. We will never evoke real lasting change segregating ourselves! We have to get out of our comfort zones and experience each other rather than learning from the television.
“Let's give the St. Louis metropolitan area, especially the children, a visual picture of what multicultural unity looks like while enjoying the therapeutic, healing benefits of the creative arts, powerful speakers and community outreach.”
HEAL held its first event in March at Kiener Plaza in St. Louis and about 1,000 people attended, Mills said.
“We fed 800 people and gave care packages to about 400 homeless people,” she said.
The care packages included socks, personal-care items, snacks and other items, Mills said.
At the Arnold event, the group has about 200 backpacks to give out, so they will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Mills said the group has a lot of nonperishable food and clothes and shoes to give out, too.
Wells Fargo and a number of local businesses, churches, agencies and residents have sponsored the event or provided donations for it, Mills said.
She said the Gateway Housing Foundation has partnered with HEAL, which operates under the foundation’s 501c3 status.
Mills said HEAL is run by volunteers, so no one is paid or makes money from the group.
For more information, go to the group’s website at heal2015.org.