Local Student Make Lifelong Gifts for Children at Orphanage

Art students at Barnstable High School participate in Memory Project

Art students at Barnstable High School have joined the Memory Project, a nationwide initiative in which advanced art students create original portraits for children living in orphanages around the world. Given that children who have been abandoned, orphaned, abused, or neglected usually have few personal keepsakes, the purpose of the portraits is to provide them with a special memory of their youth, to honor their heritage and identity, and to help them build a positive self-image.  The project also provides an opportunity for young Americans to open their hearts to children who have endured many hardships, and to promote the value of sharing kindness with others.

The Memory Project has been featured on national television several times, most notably when Katie Couric concluded her very first broadcast of the CBS Evening News with a story about the project’s success at an orphanage in Nicaragua.  The project has also been covered by major newspapers and magazines throughout the country, all telling the story of students who have participated. 

      Students at Barnstable High are participating as part their Fine Arts 3 and 4 courses.  To do this, the students receive pictures of children who are waiting for portraits, and then work in their art classrooms to create the portraits. Once finished, the Memory Project organization delivers the portraits to the children, and the children are then invited to create drawings or write letters to send back to the art students.  In total, the students will made portraits for 30 children living at an orphanage inHonduras.

      The Memory Project is a nonprofit organization based in Madison,Wisconsin.  This is the project’s ninth year of operation, and already more than 15,000 portraits have been produced by high school art students around the country.   Barnstable High art students count for 172 portraits over the past six years.  The most of almost any high school in the United States.