By: Jacob Bielanski

When Ben Schumaker arrived at Casa Guatemala shouldering a bag of donated medicines, his only medical qualifications were lifeguard training and Red Cross first aid. Before long he was convinced to run the long-abandoned medical clinic. "I just kind of figured I would be putting band-aids on, you know, little cuts and things like that," Ben says of the experience. "As soon as I opened those clinic doors these kids just started coming to me with really bad skin infections." Lacking even soap, the situation for the children seemed desperate. Even mothers from a local Mayan village heard about the reopening of the clinic and began bringing their babies to be screened. Ben began to feel helpless before the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing these orphans.

There are many things needed in order to provide a future for these unfortunate children. They need food, shelter and some level of education. Medicines and medical expertise are needed to fight disease. Volunteers who provide these services need a place to stay and--perhaps more importantly--a reason to stay there. Before Ben would leave Casa Guatemala he would speak to a young man--a previous tenant of many other orphanages--who would show him that these children also needed a past.

As the Memory Project website recounts, "the young man explained that he did not have any personal belongings from his youth: no photographs, no keepsakes, and no parents to help him look back on his own development. His advice was simple: try to help the kids collect special items that will contribute to their sense of identity and personal self-worth."

The idea resonated with Ben, who, "thought about it frequently after returning to Wisconsin. It was not until nine months later, while thinking of Guatemala, that he began to envision portraiture as a powerful method of honoring the immeasurable worth of children in orphanages."

A chance encounter in a bleak situation has given birth to a project that will, this year, help provide 5,000 orphans with a sense of identity, and 5,000 American art students with a global perspective. Not a bad number for a project entering its fourth year.

The mission of the Memory Project is to connect orphans with their past through portraits made by United States high school art students. The organization works with art teachers who have requested working on five portraits or more. What’s ingenious is that the program requires the portraits to be assignments rather than extra curricular activities. This provides a greater guarantee that the portraits will be completed by the youth. The school pays $15 per portrait and the shipping costs to get the portraits to Ben in Madison, WI.  Read More...