While I was on my Extended Professional Development Leave a bit ago, I spent a week at Ottawa Inner-city Ministries. During that week I experienced a really neat program called the "Youth Art Program." If you get the OIM newsletter you will know about this great ministry. It was conceived of by Jason, who works for OIM.
I liked Jason's ideas on this project and have been happy to see such positive results from it. I've wanted to finds ways to help this program out, as it is funded pretty much entirely by donations now, and this year our youth group was able to do just that.
Our youth group holds two standard fundraisers each winter at Calvin. A pancake breakfast and Chili dinner (you can see those entries elsewhere on my blog).
In each instance we set aside some funds for the art program at OIM. I was priviledged to be able to hand over a cheque for $400 to the group to help this ministry continue. They were very thankful for the money and I was thankful for people like Jason who desire to help youth who are on the street get help, education, housing, etc.
Below are a couple of pictures of the group.
The group meets on Thursday evenings at Dominion Chalmers. They are fed a meal, hang out together, and use their creative skills to create some pretty amazing artwork.
Though the end result is some great artwork, the real desire is to have this be a catalyst for confidence in life and a desire to see that confidence bring about change in the lives of these street youth. Jason has seen some really neat things happen with some of these youth. If you want to know more, I know he'd be happy to talk with you. Just give OIM a call and ask for him.
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