Our History
2000
ArtCorps is founded
Martine Kellett launches ArtCorps as a program within the New England Biolabs Foundation, sending volunteer artists to partner with communities across Latin America. Working alongside local conservation organizations, artists collaborate with youth and community members on participatory art projects rooted in the belief that creative expression opens space for dialogue, shifts attitudes, and drives collective action.
2006
ArtCorps becomes an independent nonprofit
In 2006, ArtCorps spun off from NEBF as an independent 501(c)(3). Over the next seven years, more than 60 artists led hundreds of projects with partner organizations in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, marching with women to proclaim their rights, painting health practices into colorful murals, and urging behavior change through puppet shows, bookmaking, and plays.
2012
A new
training model emerges
ArtCorps shifts its focus from short-term artist residencies to long-term capacity building. The new Creative Environmental Leadership Course trains NGO leaders in arts-based methods, leadership, systems thinking, and collaboration, equipping them to sustain community-driven change long after the training ends. The first workshop launched in Belize in 2013, with an overwhelmingly positive response!
2015
Program
expansion to Africa
We adapt our Creative Leadership curriculum for East Africa through a partnership on the East African Girls Leadership Summit in Kenya; our first step into gender equity work on the continent. As the summit grows, so does our role, and we expand Creative Leadership trainings to Cameroon and Ghana.
2016
Name change to
Creative Action Institute
As our training and contract work grows, ArtCorps no longer captures what we do. We rename ourselves Creative Action Institute to better reflect our evolving mission.
2020
Adapting for COVID-19
When COVID-19 hit, we moved all our trainings online. In East Africa, we launched Sauti ya Dada (Kiswahili for "The Girls Voice"), a two-year girls mentorship program designed to keep girls in our leadership summit safe and connected while schools closed. Built from the EAGLS curriculum, the program brought girls together in weekly small-group sessions led by EAGLS mentors, supported by printed workbooks and menstrual kits. In Latin America we launched the Community Resilience Course, which also met online, and consisted of four modules covering topics such as climate justice, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), food security, and One Health, equipping grassroots leaders with deeper tools to strengthen their communities at a moment when resilience had never mattered more.
2021
Climate justice
becomes central to our work
Over the years we find that we can't address climate without addressing gender, and vice versa. In 2021 we make that connection explicit, adopting a climate justice lens across all of our programming. We add climate content to Sauti ya Dada and create a two-year gender and climate course for our Latin America partners.
2023
CO-CREATE
launches in Tanzania
In 2023, Creative Action Institute becomes a core partner in CO-CREATE, a USAID and FCDO initiative integrating climate and gender-focused lessons into Tanzania's education system. Grounded in FCDO research showing that keeping girls in school is one of the most effective strategies for addressing climate change, we develop curricula and train educators across 90 schools and 12 civil society organizations to build classrooms where girls are supported and engaged.
2025
Obama Foundation
grant to support EAGLS
We receive a grant from the Obama Foundation to support the East Africa Girls Leadership Summit, allowing us to expand our summit to more girls.
2025
Michelle Obama
shares our work
Michelle Obama features our work on her Instagram, highlighting the story of Brenda, a Tanzanian student in our Sauti ya Dada program. The moment brought global visibility to the connection between girls' education and climate change that has defined our work for over a decade.
2026
20 years of
Creative Action Institute!
In 2026, Creative Action Institute turns 20! What started as a small artist exchange program in Latin America has grown into a global organization working at the intersection of gender equity and climate justice. Through it all, our principles have stayed the same: that creativity is one of the most powerful tools for change, that gender and climate are inseparable, and that the solutions to our climate challenges must be community-driven. On to the next chapter, we're excited for what's ahead!
Current Creative Action Institute Director, Clare Dowd (on left) with ArtCorps Founder, Martine Kellett (on right).