Water Challenge: Paper Beads

Today Art Club had our first paper bead-making workshop. We are collaborating to make hand-made paper beads in order to help bring clean water to villages in Tanzania. For every 20 beads that we make, we help bring clean water to one person in a village. It's so hard to believe that water, something that so many of us take for granted, is scarce throughout our world. Nearly 800 million people in the world live without clean water. 

In northern Tanzania, water and sanitation systems in schools are highly overburdened or non-existent. With the lack of clean water, hygiene and sanitation at schools, students increasingly miss class and often abandon their education altogether. Women and children spend up to four hours a day collecting water from sources likely to make them sick. About 200,000 children die each year after contracting waterborne diseases.

In order to help, Art Club is making beads that the Bezos Family Foundation through Students Rebuild will match with funding. 

I am so proud of my students and how awesome our beads turned out! Here are some photos from today's meeting~ 

Bones

Art Club, National Art Honor Society, and Interact Club joined together for our first meeting to create bones for an installation that we will be having in the spring. We will be installing over 500 bones (one for every student, staff member, and additional employees at our school) to raise awareness of ongoing genocide. We will also be partnering up with a class that is studying genocide to help provide facts and information about ongoing genocide in places like Somalia and The Democratic Republic of Congo. 

This project was inspired by the One Million Bones project, which was held last year at the National Mall in Washington D.C. One Million Bones were installed there to raise awareness to ongoing genocide. For every bone donated, $1 was given to help bring relief to countries suffering from ongoing genocide. At the end of our project, we will also be donating our bones. 

Art is an extremely powerful tool to raise awareness, engage a community, and mobilize action. We can't help something that we don't know about. Art Club, NAHS, Interact club, and students studying genocide at BBHS will help fight crimes against humanity by raising awareness to our school and community. 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 
― Margaret Mead


Here are some photos from Day 1~ 

First students designed a bone with newspaper and covered with masking tape~

Students working~

After the bones were made with newspaper and masking tape, students 

used plaster gauze to mold their bones~

A few finished bones~

The World Needs More

My next lesson with Art I is to create an Alter Ego Super Hero using a Monochromatic or Complimentary Color Scheme. I am excited to teach this lesson because it connects to the big idea of social issues and relates Art to something greater than the four walls of my classroom. However- something felt missing! After doing some research, I found an amazing cause to use as a basis for my lesson. It's called World Humanitarian Day. 

What is it? 

World Humanitarian Day falls on August 19th- the day in 2003 when 22 aid workers were killed in a bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad. 

"It's a day to commemorate all people who have lost their lives in humanitarian service and to celebrate the spirit of people helping people that motivates this work."

The World Needs More campaign was launched in support of World Humanitarian Day to raise much needed funds to continue the effort to help others. 

My students will be choosing one word that they feel the world needs more of. Then, they will use Facebook or twitter to submit their word and unlock a $1 donation from a sponsor. 

Next, they will use their one word to design an Alter Ego Super Hero to bring more of this one word to our world. 

I look forward to sharing my students Art with you!! 

To learn more and to contribute to this wonderful cause, please visit~ 

http://worldhumanitarianday.org/en/

What do you think the #worldneedsmore of? 

#love 

                         #dreams

                                                      #education

                                                                                    #empowerment

                                                     #healthcare

                                #hope

  #strength 

Some Finished Student Projects~