Community Enhancement Through the ArtS

Community Enhancement Through the Arts offers tools and techniques for practitioners, legal advocates, and organizations who want to learn more about how they can increase their likelihood of success by implementing visual art, poetry, theater, and other forms of artistic expression into their strategies and methodologies.    

Join Susan Justiniano & Megha Sood as they explore social justice and engagement through writing, poetry, spoken word and how to become more engaged in the community through the literary and performing arts while developing collaborations and strengthening relationships.

MEET THE FACILITATORS 


Susan Justiniano |RescuePoetix, is an award-winning self-taught bilingual globally published performing poet, advocate, spoken word artist, recording artist and teaching artist. In 2006 RescuePoetix™ emerged as a professional artist entrepreneur. As a published performing poet, she has recorded poems to music, in English and Spanish, is deeply immersed in the Arts throughout the USA and builds a body of work that focuses on sharing and strengthening community. She serves on nonprofit organization cohorts, boards, and committees throughout the USA with a focus on equity and equality in the Arts. 
She is twice honored as Poet Laureate: First Puerto Rican woman Poet Laureate of Jersey City, NJ (2022-2022) and State of New Jersey Beat Poet Laureate (2022-2024). She expands the position of Poet Laureate to engage artists of varied cultures and languages, advocate for artists as professionals, engage artists and venues that support the work of disabled artists and establish that multilingual programming, including ASL and trilingual translations, are mainstream, spotlighting the rich cultural diversity within the Arts.
​
Her advocacy and literary works reflect her commitment to uplift others, celebrate all successes and build strong relationships through connection.

Megha Sood is an Award-winning Asian American Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary Activist from New Jersey, USA. She is the recipient of the 2021 Poet Fellowship from MVICW ( Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creating Writing) and a 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project and a Four-Time State Level Winner for NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Poetry Award 2018/2019/2020/2022.

She is a recipient of the “Certificate of Excellence'' from the Mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey. Associate Poetry Editor Literary Journals Mookychick(UK), Brownstone Poets (USA), and Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine '', Stanford University. Member of the National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), Women’s National Book Association, and Advocacy Member for the United Nations Association-US Chapter. 
​
Works widely featured in journals, books, and anthologies like Poetry Society of New York, NYPL, PBS American Portrait, NPR, WNYC Studio, Sahitya Akademy, Journal for Commonwealth Literature, and many more. Author of Chapbook( “A Potpourri of Emotions”, Local Gems Press, NY), Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021), and award-winning Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress, 2022). 

She has also Co-Edited anthologies ( “The Medusa Project”, Mookychick, UK),(“The Kali Project, Indie Blu(e) Press, USA). and ( “Brownstone Poets”, USA).“The Medusa Project” has been selected as a digital payload to be sent to the moon in 2024 as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. 

​Blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/ and tweets at @meghasood16