Students From Oregon Bless Children at Orphanage!
What a wonderful gift from Lorina Johnson’s Art Club at South Albany High School. The students asked her if she knew of anyone they could help through their art. Fortunately, Lorina is friends with LovingHaiti.
The students came up with the idea of Art Bags, personalized for each child. They started by viewing the childrens’ profiles on the lovinghaiti.org website. They learned the childrens’ interests and dreams. They started with blank canvas bags and started painting.
The results were outstanding!
Masterpieces!
A lot of time and love went into this project. The students spent last school year painting, as well as raising funds through bake sales. They raised enough money to fill each bag with art supplies: a box of colored pencils, eraser, ruler, a palette of watercolor paints and a quality artist sketch pad!
When the Art Club began the art project, there were 35 children at the orphanage, and they personalized a bag for each one. They also created nine extra bags without a name. Now there are 44 children living in the childrens’ home – SAHS came up with the EXACT number of bags we needed! I brought along some fabric paint to add the new names, and to make a few changes for children no longer here – I hated to mess with the art work, but these were so special I had to be sure each child has their own.
3 nights ago we gathered all the timoun in the dining area and first showed them a slide show about the Art Club and this special project.
Pastor explained to them that “the artist students from America love you and worked hard to make you these sacs.”
He took the time to have me enlarge the Art Club photo so 4 year old Katelove could go up to the screen and point to her name on the bag. Pastor then pointed to the artist holding the bag and told Katelove “This is who loves you in America.”
Then Yonel came up and pointed to his sac and his artist…then Nounoune, then Samson…Each child was so excited and so proud.
He encouraged them all to take good care of the sacs, and also that Gramma wants them to give her a drawing for the artists to thank them.
The younger children immediately hung their bags around their necks. Most wore them to school the next day and have rarely parted with them since.
Katelove even came up with another use for her sac 🙂
The SAHS Art Club made these 44 children feel loved and valued…what a gift!!!
Mesi’, mesi’ !!!! Here is Milove’s thank you drawing:
One of the Art Club students shares her thoughts of the experience:
“For me personally, I love doing art. I may not be very good but it’s a good way to express yourself. I love the fact that we were given the opportunity to share art in another part of the world. Not only are we spreading the love of art but we customized bags for every child. I know what it’s like to grow not having much and how when I was younger getting the simplest things made me overjoyed. Obviously my life wasn’t as rough as these children but overall I’m just extremely happy that we were able to give children who have nothing of their own, happiness. I encourage people to do something similar because not only are you helping someone but that one little act of kindness can affect someone in more ways than most people realize.”
student
South Albany High School
Albany, Oregon
Thank you South Albany High School Art Club!