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Program Overview

ARTGard is a therapeutic art and gardening program that combines creative expression, heritage gardening, and Social Emotional Learning to support mental health and cultural connection. Delivered at school and community partner sites for mothers, fathers, and children alike, ARTGard helps participants process the pressures of daily life, build emotional resilience, and reconnect with their cultural roots.

Support

Who It's For

Youth ages 11 to 15, with priority to middle and high school students, along with any school-aged youth, including preschool, who could benefit from socialization, coping skills, and resilience-building. Priority is given to schools and communities in California with limited access to culturally inclusive mental health resources.

Community Wellness Labs

Community Wellness Labs are trauma-informed, culturally grounded group learning experiences delivered through five pathways, each with two signature labs that build emotional health, cultural connection, and long-term well-being: The Pause Pathway (emotional regulation), Village Elders Pathway (intergenerational connection), Mood Recovery Pathway (emotional expression), Healthy Lifestyles Pathway (everyday wellness), and Collective Care Pathway (family and belonging).

Resilience where people already gather

Wellness that lives in the community, not behind an intake form.

Community Wellness is TPF’s promise that resilience, healing, and lifelong well-being should be available in the places people already gather, not gated behind a clinical intake process.

Environments shape states. States shape behavior.

Designing enriched environments for brain well-being

Regulate · Somatic safety

Sensory grounding with soil, texture, and movement. Rhythm, repetition, breath, and an embodied pause.

Clarify · Perceptual expansion

Creative expression, narrative reframing, symbol-making, and meaning-making.

Connect · Relational safety

Shared space, peer leadership, and co-regulating adults.

Reclaim · Aspirational agency

Stewardship, contribution to community, and visible impact and purpose.

From Community Engagement to Applied Learning

ARTGard™ helps young people and emerging professionals understand how art, gardening, play, health education, and human connection can be used to strengthen individual, family, and community wellness. Your partnership with ARTGard™ provides valuable applied learning experiences that foster confidence, autonomy, aspirational awareness, and a sense of meaningful contribution. Applied-learning experiences may include:
  • Supporting therapeutic art, gardening, play, and movement activities
  • Learning about Community Health Worker services
  • Exploring healthcare and community wellness careers
  • Assisting with Community Play Dates® and wellness events
  • Helping residents connect with community resources
  • Connecting with volunteer, on-the-job training, college, university, and workforce-development pathways
  • Participating in outreach and community engagement
  • Practicing communication, teamwork, and leadership

How to Access the Program

Through referral by a school counselor, educator, or community partner, or by a school district bringing ARTGard to its campuses. Participants commit to ongoing workshop attendance.
Overview

Community Play Dates

Community Play Dates are TPF’s public, low-barrier gathering, bringing play-based connection directly into neighborhoods, parks, and community spaces. Where Wellness Labs go deep with a fixed group over several weeks, Community Play Dates are the open front door, a place for any family in the community to experience Collective Care with no referral required.

Partner With ARTGard™

ARTGard™ welcomes partnerships with

  • Schools and school districts
  • Churches and faith communities
  • Community-based organizations
  • Workforce and on-the-job training programs
  • Community colleges and universities
  • Healthcare and behavioral health organizations
  • Public libraries
  • Affordable housing communities
  • Government and public agencies
  • Other trusted neighborhood gathering spaces

Organizations may partner with ARTGard™ to

  • Host a Community Play Date®
  • Become a recurring Community Wellness Host Site
  • Support wildfire outreach and recovery
  • Create youth leadership and healthcare career-exposure opportunities
  • Host volunteers or applied-learning participants
  • Receive Brain Well-Being Model® training
  • Strengthen staff and supervisor capacity
  • Develop customized community wellness or workforce pathways

Bring ARTGard™ to your school, organization, or community

Interested in bringing ARTGard™ to your school, organization, or community? Answer a few questions, and a member of our team will contact you to explore partnership opportunities.

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