Anna Sims is a CMS mission partner in training, preparing to go out to work in Peru with local churches using community development and the arts in mission.

She is an arts educator who is interested in the therapeutic uses of art and will be using her skills and training to support local churches’ work with children and families in deprived communities.

Anna studied art at university and for the past 10 years has been working in the arts and education in a number of settings including disadvantaged/inner-city communities, youth projects, arts and heritage venues and a post-16 college. She is currently responsible for the formal education programme at an art gallery and museum in Greater Manchester.

Having always had a fascination with Latin America, Anna jumped at the opportunity to spend a year working in Ecuador and Mexico on an art project in 2008. The project worked in a number of shanty towns with street (working) children and their families, one element of a holistic programme working to break the cycle of living and working on the streets. The aims of the programme were to get the children off the streets and into education, enabling them to have a better quality of life and providing them with a safe and secure space to have a childhood.

While out there, Anna felt a tug on her heart for Latin America. After testing the calling with a small Christian organisation in Guatemala in the summer of 2010, she started pushing doors in order to return to Latin America longer term, doors that have now been opened by the Lord.

Anna hopes to use her experiences to work as a mission partner in South America sharing God’s love holistically with a wide range of people through the medium of the creative arts.

For more information contact:
Julie Hinckley
Church Mission Society
Watlington Road
Oxford OX4 6BZ
Tel: 01865 787400
Email: julie.hinckley@cms-uk.org

Published: 10:30 :: 19 March 2012 :: 980 views :: ::
Last updated: 15 June 2012
See other stories in these categories: People in Mission - Latin America