Partner-Project Highlight 2: The Circle Project at The Georgia Center for Child Advocacy
This the second in a series of blogs highlighting some of our most unique projects of 2019 and the amazing partner organizations we completed them with! Check out [link to Partner-Project Highlight 3] to continue the series.
The Project:
Paint Love projects are more than just crafts: before the visual arts element of many Paint Love projects begins, there is often an outdoor, emotional, or community activity to facilitate connection, healing, and meaning behind the artwork created. The Circle Project offered all three of these components! As an added bonus, this project involved the families of the youth served, a special opportunity at Paint Love events with the GCFCA. Paint Love staff member Ellen Gadberry describes how participants “used our whole bodies in an outdoor activity of passing a ball of red yarn around our circle to form a web of community interconnectedness” before the Paint Love staff “invited families to talk about connections and bonds within their own circle of friends and family.”
Following the yarn activity, the art project offered an opportunity to create a visual representation of each child’s community circle. Ellen notes that “there were lots of ‘turn and talk’ opportunities as we mused on elements of design including line, color, shape, and size, and on circles both as symbol/metaphor and as shapes we see everywhere in our daily lives.” Paint Love staff member Mandy Goodwin remembers that “the families worked together to find photographs, create the circles and assemble the pieces. Everyone was laughing together and encouraging one another,” before, according to Ellen, participants “spent time practicing fine-motor skills by learning to tear circle and ring shapes from folded squares of magazine pages and arranging them artfully on the page.”
All in all, Ellen concludes that “this was indeed a fun family project”!
The Partner Organization:
The Georgia Center for Child Advocacy serves children and their families when there are allegations of child abuse, neglect, or when children are witnesses to violence. They help various agencies such as law enforcement, DFCS, and the DA's office coordinate services for children and families by providing forensic interviews for children, hosting multi-disciplinary team meetings to share information, and providing therapy for children and adolescents ages 3-17 when the abuse or neglect has been substantiated.
The Georgia Center for Child Advocacy has been a Paint Love Partner since 2016, and Paint Love completed 3 projects with the GCFCA in 2019. Paint Love strives to include the parents and supporters of the youth served through the GCFCA in as many Paint Love projects as possible, and Mandy says that “the most impactful element of working with the Center for Child Advocacy is th[is unique] family-collaboration aspect.”
Interested in volunteering with Paint Love?
Or, make a donation of $250.00 to fund our next project at the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy!