Art students at The Wheatley School have joined the Memory Project, a charitable
nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create and donate portraits to youth. The project also allows art students to practice kindness and global awareness while enhancing their portraiture skills.

The Syrian conflict has been called the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Due to years of brutal civil war, millions of families have been displaced and many Syrian children are growing up in refugee camps with no experience of life outside a barbed-wire fence. Each portrait created by the Wheatley students carries a message of kindness and hope from a different world. Each portrait will help them see the beauty of their inner strength and show them they are not forgotten, they are being thought of by those of us here at The Wheatley School and the rest of the world. Our students are telling these children that  we care about their memories and their future,
and to show them how much we admire their strength and courage during this tumultuous time in their lives.

Students at The Wheatley School began their participation in the project with Mrs. Girgenti as a part of the Day of Service and Learning in October and continued to work independently outside of class time to complete these beautiful portraits. To do this, the students received photos of children who are waiting for portraits, once finished, they were mailed to the people at the Memory Project.  The portraits are then delivered by in person to the children. Once the portraits are delivered we will get a video of the children as they receive them. (This is the most exciting part for those who worked so hard on the artwork. seeing the joy on the children’s faces is priceless) In total, we made portraits for twelve children in Syria this year.

Participating students were Avani Ramnarayan, Eva LaMonica, Ciara O’Brien, Allison Zheng, Emma Leng, Gabby Testani, Sami Chusid, Skylar Blechner.

[Thank you to Mrs. Girgenti for the write-up and the photos!]

Allison Zheng, Gabby Testani, Emma Leng, Skylar Blechner, Sami Chusid, Eva LaMonica, Avani Ramnarayan (missing: Ciara O’Brien)