March 17, 2016 - Center Middle School Art Students are doing something special to ensure the children of Bolivia feel both important and valued. Memoryproject.org gives a detailed description of the project they participated in:
"We want the portraits to help the children feel valued and important, to know that many people care about their well being, and to act as meaningful pieces of personal history in the future. For the art students, we want this to be an opportunity to creatively practice kindness and global awareness."
To do this, memoryproject.org receives photos of children and teens from global charities operating residential homes, schools, and care centers in a number of different countries every year. They then provide participating art teachers with full-page color prints as well as digital copies of those photos, along with plastic sleeves to protect the finished portraits. The art teachers then work with their students to create the portraits, and in return, memoryproject.org hand-delivers them to the kids. Several different art students create portraits for each child based on several different poses. Finally, we make a video of each delivery to share with all of the art students and teachers involved.
Meagan Daniels, Art Teacher, says, "Students are drawing portraits of children from Bolivia who are impoverished or have been through a trauma of some kind. The portraits will be delivered to the children next month. I have loved seeing them work so hard on these. They are really proud of what they are doing and have really enjoyed making art for someone else. I love that it teaches them global awareness, and that it has shown them how their art can affect others in a positive way."
