Art Club’s latest project, the Memory Project, has been completed. The Memory Project started in September and students in the club made portraits of children in a Cambodian orphanage. The portraits were sent to Cambodia on Jan. 1. After the portraits arrived, students received a picture in the mail of the child and their portrait showing their reaction to the drawing. The students received these photos a couple of months after they sent the portraits and were happy to see the excited reactions.

“I liked doing the memory project because I felt like I was doing something worthwhile with my artistic ability,” senior Carl Treas said.

The Memory Project was founded in 2004 by Ben Schumaker and its purpose is to make the children see themselves as works of art. Students try to achieve this by creating portraits of kids and teens who have been either neglected, orphaned or disadvantaged. The project so far has created around 60,000 portraits for kids in 35 different different countries.

“I like the memory project because it just makes everyone who is apart of it happy,” Art Club sponsor Michael Leistner said.

This is the club’s second year working on The Memory Project after Leistner discovered it. After using money borrowed from PTO to pay it off for the first time, Art Club used fundraisers, such as hat day, to pay off more of the money this second time around.

“My favorite part about Art club is spending more time with the students,” Leistner said.