NHS Artstangs Bring Joy to Children Living In Refugee Camps
By Payton Otto, Staff Writer
33 NHS ArtStangs members are participating in a national art initiative called The Memory Project. The Memory Project is a program involving children who live in refugee camps. American high school students receive a photographic image of a child and create a high-quality portrait of them. The Memory Project staff members deliver the portraits to the children in these refugee camps.
Mrs. Mullaney, one of the art teachers at NHS, says, “The mission of The Memory Project is to show these children that they matter and that people recognize them and to use the power of art to connect people globally.”
Senior Mary Marunucci said the whole point of this project is to, “take the time to form a relationship with the kid and make something for them that they never had before.”
According to the official The Memory Project website, “The Memory Project was founded by Ben Schumaker in 2004 while he was studying psychology and social work at the University of Wisconsin.”
“Ben had just spent a month at an orphanage in Guatemala where he learned that the children had few special belongings to help capture their life stories. He had an idea to organize art teachers and their students to create portraits that could serve as positive and tangible childhood memories for the children.”
Mary Marinucci says, “ I want to make one of them [a refugee child] happy by drawing a portrait of them.”
Many of the members of the ArtStangs say that they can’t wait for these portraits to be done, so they can send them to Malaysia and give the children that live in refugee camps a portrait of themselves.