zAmya Theater Project

zAmya Theater Project uses the powerful combination of lived experience(s) and artistic expression to create a community that works for housing justice for all. 
Read our 2025 Annual Report

Building a Place of Belonging, Together

The data surrounding housing insecurity can feel overwhelming. In Minnesota, a single night sees more than 8,000 individuals experiencing homelessness—a reality that forces people to focus entirely on day-to-day survival.

Behind every number is a human being with a story and a unique voice that deserves to be heard.

Our hearts broke when Lameck, a creative workshop participant, told us, “We spend most of the day alone.” Just getting to the zAmya workshop took real effort: traveling from the shelter, crossing downtown with a cane, and pushing past the weight of the life he left behind in Kenya to start a new one here.

And yet, after the workshop, he told us: “It’s nice to come here and be together with people.”

Double Your Impact Today!

Right now, your investment goes twice as far. A generous donor will match every gift dollar-for-dollar—up to $7,000—because she knows that to create true belonging, we must work together.

Creative Expressions Sessions "Shareformance"

Your support turns "homeless" from a statistic back into a person—living, breathing, laughing, and creating.

zAmya’s mission is to address the disconnection and stigmatization of homelessness. Participants cite joy, fun, relief, expression, advocacy, and healing as reasons for attending. They act in entertaining, original productions that are guaranteed to change your mind, if not your life.

Your generosity directly funds:

• Safe Creative Spaces: Expanding workshops at Minneapolis Central Library to welcome a growing number of unhoused residents, including newly arrived immigrants and refugees.

• Artistic Advocacy: Launching the spring expansion of Locked In, our original play confronting systemic bias against unhoused people in healthcare.

• Global Collaboration: Deepening community conversations with Chen Alon, a renowned Theater of the Oppressed practitioner and former Israeli soldier who has renounced violence—to deepen the conversation and help audiences see one another’s humanity more clearly. 

Please make a gift today to ensure that people like Lameck have a place to go, a community to create with, and a reminder that they are never alone.

Thank you for being part of the zAmFam—and for making this work possible.

Polarized Theater of the Oppressed Training