This year, Debbie Helbig’s art students at East are creating portraits for orphaned children in Indonesia and Thailand. Student artists who work on the Memory Project create portraits (drawings, paintings, graphic design, etc) for children and teens world who have been orphaned, neglected or disadvantaged.
The artists receive photos of kids waiting for portraits and then create the portraits. Memory Project volunteers deliver the portraits to the kids as special gifts. The goal of the project is to inspire caring, global friendship, and a positive sense of self.
The program was begun by University of Wisconsin grad Ben Schumaker after a chance encounter with a young man in Guatemala. The man said that he didn’t have any photographs of himself as a child, no belongings from his early years, no parents to share memories with. His childhood was a blank slate, and he didn’t want any other orphaned kids to share in his fate.
Schumaker thought that if he could get high school art students to paint pictures of the orphans and send them as gifts, the children would have a memento of their youth, a bit of history to hold on to.
The program began with 100 art teachers and their students in 2004 and has since grown to produce a total of 25,000 portraits for children around the world.
Lapeer West art students are just now beginning to work on their Memory Project creations for this year. Artists from both Lapeer high schools have participated in the project for years.
For a look at photos of some of the East artists at work, visit the Lapeer Community Schools Picasa photo albums at: https://picasaweb.google.com/LapeerCS/EastArtStudentsCreateArtForTheMemoryProject#
