ABSTRACT
HEART, which stands for Healing and Education through the Arts, is an arts-based approach to providing psychosocial support for children. It uses the arts to help children process stress and express feelings, experiences, or ideas in an emotionally supportive environment, such that they can connect with peers and caring adult facilitators. This chapter presents an overview of the initiative as well as program evaluations of implementation in rural preschools in Malawi and urban preschools in Mexico. Findings indicate that HEART positively impacted the schools, teachers, caregivers, and community and is now a locally led initiative in both countries.
