ASTEP uses the arts as a tool to empower young people with creativity, knowledge, and a strong sense of self-esteem, factors which help them advance their lives and communities. At ASTEP, we provide artists with opportunities to connect with global youths, allowing them to use their gifts to create meaningful and effective change for young people in need.

Since 2003, ASTEP has partnered with 15 community organizations to provide over 800 youths ages 8-21 with uplifting arts education programming that has inspired the participants to look beyond their current social conditions and has strengthened in them the desire for a better life. ASTEP’s programs take place in communities with populations of disadvantaged children who face issues of extreme poverty. Through art, ASTEP has provided these children with a voice, awakened their dreams and given them the essential life skills, dedication to teamwork, self expression, communication and confidence to believe in a future beyond poverty. These are children who often have no access to arts education or mentorship and it is ASTEP’s mission to free their imaginations while providing them with the tools to lift themselves beyond their present circumstances.  

ASTEP’s programming is carried out by a volunteer base of professionally trained artists who represent a wide array of disciplines including drama, dance, visual art, instrumental music, playwriting, vocal arts, film, and poetry. These remarkable artists, who range from emerging to well established and well known, are trained by ASTEP to actively engage in using their talents to dynamically assist these children by teaching at one of ASTEP’s many opportunities. ASTEP prepares these artists, by way of workshops and formalized volunteer training, to be social justice entrepreneurs, educating them about foreign cultural dynamics and enlightening them about the issues surrounding impoverished children and communities around the world.     

ASTEP is currently providing services to four communities in three countries – Homestead, FL, New York, NY, Johannesburg, South Africa and Bangalore, India. At each location ASTEP collaborates with local social service and education organizations to define and help solve the problems that particular group of children face. Together, these partnerships create safe spaces where the children and artists work; inviting a deeper investment in the communities’ connection to its children and commitment to the arts. Understanding the need for sustainable change, our local partners also assist in maintaining relationships and continuing the work with the children when ASTEP volunteers are not on site.

ASTEP also assists our partnering organizations produce/maintain Group Leadership programs which provide year-round mentorship, transitional training and college application assistance to our 16-18 year old youth who have participated in our programs. 

ASTEP was conceived by Mary-Mitchell Campbell who, while volunteering at Mother Teresa's missionary in India, was motivated to effect change in the lives of children in the developing world. After returning to NYC, Mary-Mitchell began work on forming an arts-based non-profit designed specifically to help combat worldwide childhood poverty.

Simultaneously, a group of enthusiastic Julliard students had formed who, post-9/11, were looking for an effective way to give back to the community using the most significant tool they had -- their art. Mary-Mitchell, then a faculty member at Juilliard, was moved by the group's energy and became their advisory mentor.

Collaboratively, they decided on a goal: to demonstrate the power of the arts as a universal tool for engendering a greater sense of social understanding and acceptance in spite of any socially-recognized differences. Lead by Mauricio Salgado and Beth Konopka the very first ASTEP initiative occurred in Homestead, Florida and this became the prototype program upon which all of the ASTEP Experiences are formulated.

ASTEP received its 501c3 status in June of 2006. It was then that the trio recognized that they were working to achieve similar goals and decided to consolidate resources in an effort to formalize and harness what they all had learned to be true: that art has the power to bring people together to communicate an understanding that we share a common humanity.