HART Project

Welcome to City of Toronto FIFA World Cup fans!

As the former executive director and founder of Healthy Art Project, let's remember to build "healthier communities through art.... and sports."

Here's my original song, La Paix est Pour La Nuit. It was written with a few teardrops on my ukulele while I lived in a tent city, recovering from multiple acts of violence as a crisis humanitarian.

While on leave from volunteering Canadian Red Cross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOgsSX4hsNw&list=RDsOgsSX4hsNw&start_radio=1

Please give Matartu Media's YouTube channel a follow, so we can get to 1000 subscribers.

We hope to raise funds to research creating a & based response to gender-based violence. Our passion as independent journalists is to support female/LGBT2S humanitarians to be enveloped in care/love and play after critical incidents.

We encourage you to support the people behind the cause:
Independent, impartial medical aid is not possible without proper support and compassion for ourselves.

In June 2023, I chose to live in a tent and create a medical/art space amongst almost 70-100 unhoused humans in Allan Gardens. My family will never understand why I did it, but at times, we must take a stand by sitting in the grass and learning from Canada's original tribes - our Indigenous elders.

Poor public health policies and complacency around increased in violence against (women, LGBT2S, ALL) kills.

If not, the disorder and lack of empathy spills into everyday life like a plague of apathy.

It looks like a lack of continuity of care.
It looks like charting assault as "asthma attack/situational anxiety" in the emergency rooms all across the world
It looks like a white male doctor writing that I (Chinese flamenco dancer) have NFA (no fixed address) & am a schizophrenic, for using psylocibin to heal
It looks like my friends wandering away when I try to ask for help at a party(NIMBY - not in my back yard)

It looks like complete strangers buying you and I
-a steak dinner while you and I dance with the dark dogs of violence, barking at police to do "something small."

While the community remembers, that even in
Everyone has the right to play, to live free and to be safe
In the world at large and in their brains
To worship whoever they choose and find daily rituals that make sense.

"Wherever we go, there we belong."

I am a humanitarian who chose homelessness for a while on medical leave from the Canadian Red Cross due to "heaps and heaps" of violence:

-gender violence
-police violence
-hospital "procedural" violence under the Mental Health Act

We/I don't want to focus on the inhumanity of humanity.

In 2010 or around that time, HART Project group registered as a federal non-profit. It actually began with a very nerdy art project called....

Human Art Randomized Trial!

I was funded by Vancouver Foundation to draw and talk to humans all alongside Hastings Ave: it's infamously "Canada's worst area code." On craft paper, I believe in 2009, I drew and overcame my fear of the homeless. Never did I ever consider, that I would join them, with my African graduate certificate and all my street nursing skills.

Social innovation starts with something small.

Health equity grows when haters and lovers join in the party.

On the soccer field, friend and foe play together.

So, please play safely.

And consider funding Matartu Media Group as we explore using visual storytelling, dance, art and music to combat violence against humanitarians, women & children.

It starts with men and boyz.

Learning it's ok to cry if you lose a soccer game.
Learning it's not ok to hit a girl or "that weirdo" in school who wears rainbow socks.
Asking for help, if you see something bad happen.

Link:

Our roots:
HART Project started as a rat pack group of friends:

-a hippie bad ass social worker I found on Craigslist
-a Spanish graffiti duo Olliemoonsta also from Craigslist!
-an East Van social enterprise basket baller
(who also became a social worker)
-and me,
a RN and a class clown with itchy feet.. always searching for seat sales to Africa.

La Violence Contre Les Humanitaires
est D-É-G-U-E-U-L-A-S-S-E

We believe in hope in the face of violence
Song and dance in face of inhumanity
And the dreams of children and their allies
Everywhere that your heroes dance with footballs.

Check out Olliemoonsta on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/olliemoonsta/

Remember to give us, Matartu Media, a follow on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff0DSNQcC00

Get in touch if you have soccer photos to share!
www.instagram.com/matartu

Zikomo kwambiri,

Karen Chan

Independent Media

Matartu Media Malawi
416-771-0656 (SMS/WhatsApp)
[email protected]

*these opinions are solely my own and do not represent the views of any past or present employer or humanitarian agency.

olliemoonsta • Instagram photos and videos 2,361 Followers, 1,238 Following, 560 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from

13 Photos:

HART Project group Healthy Art Project -Kenya. Design & Illustration. by Karen Chan has become

Matartu Media 🇲🇼.

We are a for-profit media partnership between me and 🎁 Gift Matchado in Malawi.

While we explore our business structure, we may still morph into a trust (registered charity or CBO) and a media partnership.

Gift and I co-founded Matartu, Swahili for African minibus, 🚐 to combat gender-based violence with edutainment

And visual storytelling.

In our global hoods, we like to pretend that kubwa shida or bad things don’t happen where we live.

They do. Heartbreakingly, my friends daughter was killed in an act of femicide shortly before Mother’s Day at just age 30.

It’s a collective responsibility to do something if we see something as clinicians, police, social service workers, or just everyday citizens.

It’s astounding to us that neighbourhood police officers never seem to have pens to write down a women’s shelter, or they seem more occupied with giving out stickers to kids in a mall than to help someone

like me this week,

Who has temporarily left abuse.

It seems perplexing that judges will declare someone a dangerous person, likely to re-offend, and then they get a light sentence.

I have galavanted about the global diaspora as a humanitarian. My health records follow me in a telemedicine file managed by Telus, one of our big telecom providers in 🇨🇦.

Doctors in Ontario don’t honour my health diagnoses as closes as 4 h away, or even from a 10 km radius away at the women’s hospital.

How on Earth can someone else who isn’t trained as a nurse and security guard, be expected to competently leave abuse?!

We can. We have to rely on strangers, even churches and sometimes not friends.

Friends feel uncomfortable and often don’t feel capable to help. So they send thoughts and prayers and do nothing.

Perhaps, that is better than nothing.

It’s not enough.

Guilt comes later, when you or I realize our friend, a patient, a person crying in our police station was begging for help to leave.

Please remember that during FIFA in Toronto, Vancouver, the US and Mexico,

That there will be more violence against women, men and LGBT2S folks.

In Toronto Victim Services and
Womens College Hospital are available 24/7 for support with IPV, domestic abuse and sexual assault.

So are the police

And us, Matartu Media.

We are journalists, nurses and medics with very little resources and only one staff member in Canada.

If you feel compelled to volunteer, we would love to have you, especially if you hold first aid, security, police, military or medical training!

Get in touch 416-771-0656 or via Instagram

A wobbly 🍓 ❤️ for a wobbly lady! Trying to centre on a short respite away from the abuse and mold at Homes First where I live.

Bookmarked for later!

👉 Try it out for FREE now Used by 50,000 teams, rated 4.7/5 ⭐

Did you know how important art can be in medical practices?

“Some of medicine’s most indispensable lessons are unfolding far from lecture halls, textbooks, and hospital corridors. Medical schools are increasingly turning to art and performance to help students sharpen observation, deepen empathy, and engage more thoughtfully with the human stories behind illness—skills that are found at the heart of compassionate, effective care.”

Read the full article here:
https://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2026/02/art-of-empathy-in-medical-training