Global Arts Therapy Project Gaining Momentum

Two weeks into incorporating, filing, organizing, phone calls to three different continents and a plethora of e-mails sent to this person and that, it becomes abundantly clear that the volcano of chaos has erupted and Global Arts Therapy has built some momentum.

Samantha Thomas is spearheading
the Global Arts Therapy Project. 

There is no day that I relax; this is a labor of big love that leaves me sleepless at night and excited to get up in the morning and keeps my brain working hard.  The process of building a nonprofit is tedious; there is always something that has to be done, whether it is filing documents or developing promotional campaigns, there is no end to the amazing challenges to helping others.

Alright, maybe I’m romanticizing this too much and maybe I’m not telling you about the e-mail that left my blood boiling and maybe I’m not letting you in on my fear of failing people or god forbid not being able to launch this thing after countless hours and late nights and two very hard years of 65 hour work weeks in South Korea. So let’s be real - nobody is perfect and my inner-most fears float through my head, they harass me like some psychopathic sugar plum fairy whom has nothing better to do.  Fear has been my biggest enemy for far too long and that’s why I decided to bring this organization to life. 

Global Arts Therapy’s roots are deep seeded in a project that I designed for an alternative culture class way back in my university years and after my father died I walked away from it; what can I say? I wasn’t ready yet, I wasn’t able to go full throttle and now here I am, still teetering on some balance beam, halfway between fear and halfway between enlightenment.

So what happens when an e-mail sends you into a tail spin just minutes before you are preparing to speak with someone who is well versed in nonprofit financial matters? Who do you call? What do you do? Its 8:30 am on a Saturday morning and most people I know are just arriving home from a long night out in Seoul; I am beating my alarm clock to check e-mail, prepare for a priority phone call and then get back to drafting documents. 

Before I can even climb out of bed to get a cup of coffee my laptop is on and ready to go. I message my consultant friend and my attorney while talking business with a nonprofit finance guru. Excellent! Meeting number one finished! Mission accomplished! We’ve got a person who speaks numbers on board! 

Now onto other pressing matters, in a panic I speed dial my consultant friend to ask how I should pursue this-with an hour of concrete advice and a new e-mail from the Messiah himself, the man who has no problems taking a phone call from 15,000 miles away at 10:30 pm on a Friday night; my attorney. After a few laughs, a billion questions and god only knows how much money later, my worries have somewhat subsided. The future of Global Arts Therapy hangs in the balance of the 501 © 3 gods and we’ve got a long way to go however all components are coming together. 

Tail spins or not.  I might be young but I know what I want and I’m stubborn enough to go after it. I refuse to stop until the mission has been accomplished, as Nick Cave says, “Bring it on!”

-Samantha