The Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center, Inc., the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), through its after school Beacon programs, and the Unity Project have entered into a collaboration to celebrate Hans Christian Andersen and to promote resilient life skills in children and youth through a story telling and art initiative based on the works of Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen's 200th birthday will be commemorated in 2005. The life of Hans Christian Andersen is itself a touching story of resilience as he overcame a number of personal adversities and directed his life's work to the upliftment of others. For the first part of this program, his story will be read by volunteer storytellers to youth at Beacon programs throughout the city. The resilient qualities of his life will then be used as a "lens" through which children will look for these same strengths in the characters in his stories. Then, stories from Hans Christian Andersen's anthology of work will be read to the children and youth. Beacon staff will be provided with a training program that will help them see how to bring out these resilient strengths contained in the stories and in the lives of their youth participants. Then, assistance will be provided to help the staff work with the youth to translate these insights into their own artistic expressions. The Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center will sponsor awards to acknowledge the illustrations of the life lessons contained in these stories at Hans Christian Andersen's 200th birthday party at Scandinavia House April 2, 2005.

The Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center has sponsored storytelling for the past 50 summers at the Hans Christian Andersen statue near Conservatory Pond in New York City's Central Park. They also co-sponsor story telling contests in the New York City public school system and present programs at the Hans Christian Andersen School in Harlem (P.S. 242) and at Scandinavia House.

The Unity Project was one of the founding collaborators in the Healing Arts Project working with DYCD. Its purpose is to promote resilient strengths in youth that help them to transform crises into opportunities for personal and community development and to foster the development of a generation of competent global citizens.

There are 80 Beacon programs, administered by DYCD, located in public school buildings throughout NYC. Adherence to youth development principles and a high level of quality community involvement are hallmarks of the Beacon model which continues to set the standard for other municipalities to follow. They operate a minimum of six days and 42 hours a week, in the afternoons, evenings, weekends, during school holidays and vacation periods and during the summer. In addition, there are programs for adults. DYCD's Beacon programs are committed to ensuring the safety, engagement and empowerment of all its youth and adult participants.

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