Design4Kids volunteers teach teens how to establish a successful design business
Design4Kids is a volunteer-based community of creative professionals who share their area of design expertise with teens in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. Volunteers come from a variety of professional design backgrounds, including graphic design, photography, marketing, fine art, web development, writing, animation and illustration.
Volunteers for Design4Kids provides week-long workshops where teens learn how to establish a successful design business. The organization works with a non-profit called Fotokids, which is working to end the cycle of poverty for some of Central America's poorest children. Fotokids is an after school program that teaches art techniques to participating students.
Nancy McGirr, a former war correspondent, founded Fotokids after she worked on a photo project about children in Guatemala who were forced to scavenge for trash to survive called "Out of the Dump"; she is the inspiration for Design4Kids.
To learn more about Design4Kids and Fotokids please visit design4kids.org and fotokids.org.
Click here to watch a video about Nancy McGirr, founder and executive director of Fotokids.
What a delight to come across this article. Thank you Kate for posting it.
The mission of the Design4Kids project is to help educate talented, but underprivileged, teens in the skills, attitudes, and processes necessary for serving design clientele, and thereby give them greater economic viability using the talents they were born with, combined with the skills and education they are acquiring.
Working with our industry-savvy volunteers, the kids are exposed to a lot of wisdom in these brief week-long workshops. They do all the work themselves, interview the client; conceptualize, create, and produce solutions to the clients needs; and finally present their designs to the client. Along the way the kids are supported, taught, and challenged by the volunteers to give their projects their full creative energies.
The result is euphoria when, on the last day of the workshop, the kids make their presentation to their client. The work always far exceeds the clients expectations. They're always impressed and grateful. This translates into immense satisfaction for the teens who get a glimpse, some for the first time, of their potential, and leave motivated to work harder in school towards becoming whatever they choose to become.
It's a fantastic experience for kids and adults alike, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with these amazing people.
Jeff Speigner Director, The Design4Kids Project design4kids.org
posted by inspiritu on 9/29/2009 8:36 pm