Our
Projects

SanArte's "The Snow is Softer Here" project is a youth-led, abolitionist healing project rooted in art, music, cultural memory, and collective care for undocumented and Indigenous youth. SanArte was born from deep loss: our co-founder, Jose Ventura, was a 17-year-old from El Salvador who crossed eight countries to reunite with his mother in the U.S. After surviving kidnapping and torture by cartels, Jose was met not with safety, but with violence and abandonment. At 14, his mother kicked him out. By 17, he was detained in a youth jail in Washington, alone and unsupported.

 

Jose loved to write music, freestyle rap, paint murals, and organize for justice. He was brilliant, joyful, always showing up for others, but the system never showed up for him. He passed alone in a car outside a friend’s house, after years of being shuffled through detention centers, shelters, and streets. He passed due to systemic neglect and from being forced to carry more pain than any youth should have to bear alone.

 

SanArte is our response to that silence. It’s a model of community-based healing rooted in culture, language, movement, and memory, offering free workshops in cumbia, graffiti, altar-building, and collective meals. SanArte is innovative because it’s a radical departure from systems that currently exist. Where traditional mental health care centers western frameworks, SanArte centers Indigenous knowledge. Where youth are often institutionalized for expressing distress, SanArte meets them with drums, art supplies, and peer-led healing circles. Where mental health is gatekept by degrees and diagnoses, we lead with lived experience and collective accountability.

Our initiative, Yolotl Ollin, addresses the urgent need for culturally relevant emergency preparedness among Indigenous and underserved communities in King County—groups disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental injustices.

 

In 2023, during a severe winter crisis, traditional emergency services and food banks fell short—providing canned, processed foods that did not meet the cultural and nutritional needs of Indigenous communities and immigrants. In response, SanArte mobilized to provide tailored support by distributing culturally appropriate items: arepas for Venezuelan families, masa for Mexican families, fufu flour for African migrants, and traditional foods like tamales, and ceremony soups. This intervention reached over 600 individuals, exposing critical gaps in conventional disaster response systems.