In 2003 I made a proposal and received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to conduct "The Wide House Project" with at risk children in San Francisco.

I asked the children to help me design a building for the art center in Mozambique.

Using African Earth Architecture as inspiration, this experience reinforced for these children that their ideas and skills are valuable and valid and that we are all artists if we allow ourselves to think creatively. The main goal of the project was to teach the children about African culture, and I took inspiration from many different nations within this great continent. The title of the project "Wide House" comes from a translation of a Nigerian creation myth, in which the first house is formed to house all the creatures that god creates. This place, "Ile-Ife," the wide house, is one of the most sacred cities for the Yoroba peoples, that still exists in Nigeria. We also studied Adinkra symbols from Ghana and a miryad of different types of sculpture from across the nations.

Over 3 months I taught ceramics to children from the Potrero Hill Neigborhood House and Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. We had our final exhibition in the gallery at Ruby's Gallery in January 2004, we exhibited our masks, tiles, and individual and group sculptural houses. Proud parents attended the first art exhibition their children had ever been a part of. One mother, through tears said to me, "Thank you so much for giving my child an opportunity to shine". Tiles made by the children were brought as gifts to the children in Mozambique, and laid into the ground of the first class room.