Last year I was assigned to do an art project for the National Art Honor Society, NAHS, called the memory project. After reading a few stories behind the project, it touched my heart, and even though my artistic skills are not as professional as I hoped they would be, I put my whole heart and soul into it.
In 2003, while volunteering at an orphanage in Guatemala, Ben Schumaker, a graduate student of social work at the University of Wisconsin, learned that the kids there had few special belongings to represent moments of their childhood.
They had very few photos, for example, to serve as memories from their early years. Since Schumaker had always enjoyed making portraits in school art classes, he had the idea of getting art students involved in creating portraits for the kids. We also had the chance to exchange emails in which he answered a few questions.
The Memory Project was officially born in 2004, and Schumaker still coordinates it full time today. To date, the project has created nearly 50,000 portraits for kids in 34 countries, and the group intends to keep going as long as they can.
It all started when one day, Schumaker happened to have an encounter with a Guatemalan man who had grown up in an orphanage himself, and he just happened to mention how he did not have any photos or other keepsakes from his childhood.
“He said that after I go home and develop the photos on my camera, I should send copies of the photos back to the orphanage for the kids to have. And that really struck me very deeply, because it was an entirely different 'need,'” said Schumaker. “I had been overwhelmed by the kids' needs for better nutrition, healthcare, and so on, but this 'need' to have a personal keepsake was one that I could actually do something about.”
Schumaker has always loved doing portraits for friends and relatives, and he knew that that was a really powerful way to connect with someone on a human-to-human level; therefore, he thought that maybe he could have art students make portraits for these kids. When Schumaker got back to Wisconsin, he started contacting high school art teachers, and that is how the project began.
“I never imagined that the Memory Project would have become my full-time job. I was just running it on a volunteer basis in my free time, but then in 2006 Katie Couric broadcasted a story about me and the project on her first night as anchor of the CBS Evening News,” said Schumaker. “That helped to get teachers around the country involved, and it's been a full-time job -- though I would actually call it more of a lifestyle than a job -- ever since.”
The drawings are always sent to someone who goes to each orphanage and delivers the portraits to the kids. Schumaker has done most of the deliveries himself, but a couple of other people have also done a lot of them. Most of the kids ultimately put the portraits in their lockers or tape them up next to their beds.
“It’s usually not until after all of the portraits have been handed out that I get to take a breath and look out over the crowd of kids all looking at their portraits and looking at each others’,” said Schumaker. “In those short moments at the end, it’s a pretty wonderful feeling. I like to pause and think about how they will have those portraits for the future and when they’re adults themselves, and maybe even have their own kids. They will have that portrait as a really personal and unique memory of childhood.”
The Memory Project has involved in its program orphanages from 35 countries spread pretty evenly around the world. There has been a bit more involvement from Latin America since that is the closest region to the United States, but they have also worked with orphanages from Africa, eastern Europe, and Asia.
A few kids actually have parents who love them, but who are so desperately poor that they brought the kids to the orphanage so that they could get regular meals, good shelter, and an education. But then there are many kids who were abandoned. Schumaker had met children who were left in trash cans, underneath bridges, or in front of hospitals. Other kids are there because they were being abused at home, or maybe they had only one parent who had really bad drug or alcohol problems, or other issues.
“There are many reasons, I guess. But you know, what I think is really cool is that the kids usually don’t present themselves as victims of sad situations. They pretty much present themselves as regular kids who want to be happy, play, and have dreams for their lives,” says Schumaker.
I hope that more students get involved in this wonderful project in the future. I hope this makes everyone aware of what they can do with their artistic skills and help those children in need. It will truly have a positive impact on the children, and memorable one, too.
