Prep Art Students Help Refugee Children in Special Way
October 30, 2017
Poverty. Abuse. Hunger. These are only a fraction of the struggles that millions of children face everyday.
Creighton Prep has recently joined the Memory Project, a nonprofit organization that delivers self-portraits to children facing extreme poverty and other serious challenges.
“They were looking for art students who would study the photos, create portraits, and then send them back as gifts for these children,” art teacher Amy Gillispie said.
Basic Art students at Prep receive photos from the Memory Project of the children that they will draw. Students then work in class to create the portraits. When finished, the Memory Project delivers the artworks, including 35 works bound for Syria this year. Reactions of the children receiving the portraits are videoed and sent to all involved students and teachers.
“What a better way to give something back to somebody who doesn’t get anything,” Gillispie said.
These pictures are meaningful not only for the priceless and rare keepsakes that the vulnerable children receive, but also for the rewards given to Prep students and teachers alike through their charitable works.
“This will help [students] continue on the path of giving back,” senior Daniel Mattern said.
Most of the children in the 43 countries that the Memory Project serves are too poor for actual pictures of themselves. Many will grow up without any mementos of their childhood. Portraits are the closest that the children may come to putting their youth on paper.
“A lot of these kids aren’t going to have photographs of themselves, so this is a keepsake that they will have to look back on,” Gillispie said.
Prep art students have the choice of either making the portrait of a Memory Project recipient or of someone in a picture from home. There is immense popularity in the charitable act, with approximately 90% of students choosing a Memory Project portrait over a different one. This popularity doesn’t seem to be dying out anytime soon.
“I sure hope it becomes a tradition, it is a cool thing that we are doing,” Mattern said.
