Three Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory art students used their skills with a paint brush to create colorful self-portrait keepsakes for orphaned children in India and Thailand, spending hours of their time to help less fortunate children around the world.
Seniors Raheem Roberson and Chelsea Longsworth and junior Nick Moncy participated in The Memory Project, an international initiative in which art students create portraits for children around the world who have been orphaned, abandoned, neglected or disadvantaged. The goal of the portraits is to provide the children with a special memory of their youth, to honor their heritage and identity, and to help them build a positive self-image, according to the organization’s website.
“I think The Memory Project was an amazing idea,” said Moncy, who painted portraits of a little girl from India and a little boy from Thailand. “The Memory Project opened my eyes and my heart. If I or you were in the position of one of the orphaned children, we would definitely need the love and care kids can’t live without. Knowing this, it is imperative that we reach out to those in need because they are our own flesh and blood. Everyone deserves love, safety and happiness.”
Chaminade-Madonna art teacher Angela Canosa assigned the students the assignment for the second consecutive year because she said the project follows the school’s mission of helping students become caring participants and leaders in the service of community, church and those in need. Both Moncy and Longsworth participated in the project last year as well.
“I think it’s great to help the community, and using the talents of these students showcases their artwork for a good cause,” Canosa said. “It was a very rewarding project.”
Ben Schumaker, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, created The Memory Project in 2004 after volunteering at an orphanage in Guatemala. He explained that he, as well as the kids at the orphanage, didn’t have many personal keepsakes to contribute to his sense of self-identity, and from this, Schumaker envisioned that having portraits made by art students would be a way to connect American youth with kids from other countries in a meaningful exchange of caring. And since the inception of The Memory Project, art students from the USA, UK and Canada have created more than 30,000 portraits for children around the world.
This year, The Memory Project selected several orphanages in India and Thailand (last year was Uganda) and mailed digital photos of each child to the Chaminade-Madonna art class. The students then created painted replicas of the digital photos. Once the students completed the portraits, The Memory Project distributed them to the orphans. The Chaminade-Madonna students received photographs of the orphans holding their self-portraits as a thank you for their hard work. In addition, the organization sent them a video link, so they could see the children’s live reactions.
“I was amazed and I felt good to see the boy I painted very excited holding the portrait I created,” said Roberson, who participated in the project for the first time this year. “It made me want to visit him and help him.”
“One of the adults told me that in India only rich and famous people have portraits of themselves and that the kids never would have imagined having their own,” he said in a letter to the students after delivering the portraits. “You made it happen for them.”
For more information about The Memory Project, visit www.thememoryproject.org.
