Dramatic Need

Dramatic Need is a UK-based charity that sends international volunteers from the creative arts (such as actors, artists and musicians) to South Africa to host workshops with children living in rural communities.

Plenty of wonderful charities are working to help clothe, feed and shelter African children in need.

We do something different.

We look at the emotional needs of children.

We send professional artists, actors, dancers, film-makers, and musicians to volunteer in some of the most challenged communities in South Africa to give children a chance to have fun and express themselves.

Conducting workshops in schools, teaching art, drama and music, volunteers help radically change the lives of underprivileged kids, giving them an outlet to express their emotions in a creative form, and cope with poverty, malnutrition and disease.

Children need food, medicine, shelter and education. They also need childhood.

Dramatic Need helps kids living through hardship to just be kids.

'Dramatic Need is a young, energetic charity, providing life-changing experiences for children living in abysmal circumstances. They use the creative arts to approach serious issues such as HIV and domestic abuse in a way which the kids can understand and assimilate. I think the work they do is hugely impressive.' Danny Boyle, Film-maker