The Youth Arts Project, a project of the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, exposes kids primarily in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Bloomfield, East Liberty, Friendship, Garfield, and Lawrenceville to a variety of different arts. Steel Dragon participated in the program in the Spring of 2006.

Steel Dragon held an 8 week introduction to kung fu and lion dance course for middle school aged- kids, with the option to continue training with Steel Dragon if they decided they were interested.
Outreach to promote this course was mainly accomplished through a series of special seminars during physical education classes at Arsenal Middle School. In these classes, very basic concepts were introduced to the kids to give them basic exposure to kung fu. If they were interested and their parents agreed, they could enroll in the course. 11 of these seminars were conducted over 3 days, the majority of them (9) in two days.
Classes were designed to start the students on the road to establishing a kung fu foundation while at the same time exposing them to a range of skills involved in kung fu training, including kicks, strikes, blocks, stances, stepping, awareness, evasion, lion dance and drumming. The Arts Inititiative is providing two grants for students to continue studying with Steel Dragon, and Steel Dragon is also providing partial grants for these students to continue studying.
First day of the class
Stretching