PHOTO BY MATT PREPROST Enlarge Image

From left: Golden Gate teacher Donna Beynon-Patterson, and students Aimee Souka and Ciarra O’Reggio are part of the school’s Brush Out Poverty group.

Painting pals are the new pen pals.

At least that’s the case at Golden Gate School, where a group of students are participating in Brush Out Poverty, exchanging paintings with children in Uganda who have been orphaned by AIDS.

Donna Beynon-Patterson launched the extracurricular lunch program at the beginning of the school year after learning about it at a teacher’s conference.

"I thought it was a neat idea," said Beynon-Patterson, who teaches drama, language arts and social studies.

"Then this year we became a UNESCO school, so it sort of fit."

Around 14 students stuck around in the program, which met two to three times a week.

Students were posed a question: what would you want to communicate, in a painting, to a child who has been orphaned by age?

The students spent six weeks crafting their works before they were sent off in mid-November. The scope of the paintings ranged from Canadian landscapes to butterflies to others that communicated messages of hope and harmony.

"Some of the kids just wanted to represent positive messages of hope. There was a lot that came out of not being alone. That we’re all part of this world together," Beynon-Patterson said.

Students hope to receive paintings back from their pals in about a month, she said.

Once they do, the students plan to turn the paintings into various kinds of prints and hold a fundraiser for orphanages involved in Brush Out Poverty.

"It’s more of a cultural exchange, but you can also take it that step further, which was our intention," said Beynon-Patterson.

"I think its just another step… having a global consciousness about what’s going on in the world. I think that connects them, even if just a moment in time, to somebody else somewhere else in the world who is in a very difficult situation."

 Aimee Souka, a Grade 7 student, painted a tree basking in the glow of a sunset, to represent the turning of a day.

"It could either be a new day or the end of a bad day," she said.

"I just feel that if I was in that situation, it would suck. But I would go to bed, wake up, and start over."

Ciarra O’Reggio, a Grade 8 student, imagined a boy painting over a blank wall, turning the canvas into whatever he wanted.

O’Reggio said she signed up for the project because of the sense of community it creates.

"I love art and I just really wanted to do it," she said. "To see my painting in the hands of someone across the world is really cool."

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matt.preprost@canstarnews.com