When I started at the Hope Foundation as Manager of HOPE KIDS, the youth who volunteered out of school to bring hope to those in care centres had difficulty articulating what exactly that meant. Over time we learned that representations of hope, like pieces of art work, 3-D models like hope trees, and graphic organizers enabled us to put words to our actions.
This led to out Hope Youth Art Project where we asked students to create 2-D representations of hope for our annual HOPE WEEK during the last week of January. This image is one of the submissions. It is a collection of students' art in early elementary. Each piece of art in itself makes a pretty strong statement about these young childrens' understanding of hope. The repetition of the images as a whole speak, in my opinion, to the power of our collective hope or the collective hope of our youth.
Resource and proposal writing have kept me away from my blog these past few days. This image which is over our couch in the living room at the Hope Foundation, reminds me of the power of our collective hope and support for each others' hope. When I am feeling overwhelmed and not sure about how things will turn out, it is this image that comes to my mind. When we put together each small step we make, each pebble we move, the mountain does appear to be movable afterall.
Every year I am more hopeful about what I see happening in the lives of children and youth as they make hope both visible and accessible in their own lives and the lives of others. Although we may have to take a break from the Hope Youth Art project next year because we do not have the resources (people to carry out the project) to make it happen, I have this image to remind me of what we did do at one time, despite the odds against it happening.
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