Her voice was the only thing in the world Malika Whitley had.

It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d had so much more. Straight A’s. A family. A home.

The quiet time was the worst. That was when the memories of those all things came flooding back, including the memory of how she’d ended up where she was in the first place. After a slow spiral into schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Malika’s mother was jeopardizing her daughter’s safety. And with no resources, no one to trust and nowhere to go, Malika had ended up on the street, alone, trafficked and invisible.

But on Wednesdays, she could escape all of that. Slipping into a dark church basement through the side door, she found that one thing stopped all of those thoughts and gave her hope, security and control again: singing.

It was Wednesday nights that got her through her circumstances, kept her working, going to school and ultimately graduating college with degrees in international communications, cultural relations, and social economics. But she recognized that her success was unique. Thousands of kids worldwide and even right down the block from her never climbed their way out of the darkness she escaped.

During a 2010 music internship in Cape Town, South Africa, it clicked for her. She passed homeless children, who despite their situation – or because of it – sang and danced joyfully in the street. So she started a program connecting them to professionals at recording company she worked for. When her post-grad work found her in Hyderabad, India where children gathered around her to show off their creations and vie for a sale, she knew that the program she created in South Africa could have meaning here too.

So when she finally returned to the States in 2012, she set to work on building an actual program to give homeless kids the same thing she found in singing, and that she saw in the children in South Africa and Hyderabad. Since that fateful decision, her organization ChopArt (pronounced “shahp,” Cape Town slang for hello/goodbye/cool/congratulations) has given 60,000 homeless kids & teens art outreach programs, summer art camps, and year-round events to attend. But even more, ChopArt has given those children trusted circles of friends, something to look forward to each day, and a purpose to pursue. In fact, some of those kids have gone on to pursue careers in the arts with the skills they’ve developed under ChopArt’s guidance.

It’s grown from a small donation-based operation to a global non-profit bolstered by funding from socially minded corporations like Mailchimp along with thousands in competitive, merit-based, and international government grants. Today, ChopArt serves Atlanta, New Orleans, Hyderabad and Accra, Ghana to combat the effects of homelessness, sex trafficking, suicide and drug abuse on one of our most vulnerable communities. Malika’s work has been instrumental in bringing greater awareness to the 1.3 million school-aged homeless children in America alone.

And to her surprise, in her work, Malika’s found an even greater voice. “I would never be able to talk about my experience if those kids hadn’t had so much courage and trust in me,” she said. And without Malika, thousands of homeless children with stories like hers wouldn’t have had the opportunity ChopArt’s given them to change their lives through the power of creativity.

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