The Art of Care for Children in Adversity and Those Who Serve Them

November 14, 2025

The Art of Care for Children in Adversity and Those Who Serve Them

This workshop will provide an opportunity for people working with children to experience the power of narrative, storytelling, communication, and performance in the midst of conflict and crisis. It is open to professionals, students, and community members. It will include Georgetown University students and faculty, frontline actors, social creatives working under authoritarianism, and key allies to share stories, reflect, reconnect with purpose and play, and think through ways to communicate their work to build further support.

This event is co-hosted by the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (the Lab) at Georgetown University. It is part of the Art of Care Initiative, led by the Lab's Executive Director Derek Goldamn, which advances the idea that art and care are profoundly linked, and that this linkage can lead to more caring systems, better health outcomes, and a more just world.

This workshop is complemented by "Truth-telling, Performance, and the Art of Getting Things Done," an in-person event on November 12 that brings together librettist George Brant, child rights advocate Mykola Kuleba, and activist Katya Pavlevych to explore how truth-telling, performance, and creative action can drive responses to Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainian children.

Participants

Gillian Huebner (facilitator)

Gillian Huebner is the executive director of the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University. A global child rights and protection specialist with extensive global experience related to children and armed conflict and child-family separation in a variety of contexts, she is a member of the Bring Kids Back UA task force at the invitation of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

Raghad Makhlouf (facilitator)

Raghad Makhlouf is an accomplished actress, director, and teaching artist, and a two-time Helen Hayes Award nominee. She is thrilled to join the Art of Care initiative as its associate director. With a dynamic career that spans Syria, Lebanon, and Europe, she has an extensive repertoire of performances on stage and has appeared in more than 400 hours of television drama.

Emma Jaster (facilitator)

Emma Jaster specializes in physical expression and communication as a performer, director, educator, and facilitator. Her work onstage, in the world, and in the classroom focuses on the cross-cultural and humanizing potential of performance. As the associate director of the Lab, she works with international artists at the intersection of politics and performance and develops courses to share the skills of the stage for the sake of diplomacy and advocacy.