Volunteer Spotlight on .... Gidion Phillips
This is the full copy of the article in The Handprint, the Free Arts Volunteer Newsletter on June 30, 3009
Last October I spent 2 weeks in Africa: Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania to visit a Masaai tribe in northern Tanzania where I sponsored a water well that had been drilled in their area, Embukoi, and they had carved my brother's name into the base as a memorial to him. The rest of the trip was spent visiting schools, refugee camps, orphanages and a home for the disabled to determine where the need was greatest for the wells to be drilled in 2009.
Life just doesn't get better than that.
When I returned to Los Angeles, I conducted 3 sessions at Vista del Mar (about thirty 16 year-old kids) using this trip as a theme. The first week was a slide show of photos covering at least 8 locations and hundreds of kids. The American kids were amazed and engaged. They couldn't believe that these people had no water at all, that some live in garbage dumps (Kibera), that they had never seen themselves (in mirrors or cameras), etc. The local kids asked great questions about the people, the food, the culture and more. I gave each kid a packet of photos and an original drawing made by the kids at the Starch Factory School depicting their world: huts, goats, wells, their school, kids playing.
The second session at Vista del Mar was an art project where they made t-shirts for kids in Africa that I promised to deliver to the children in Africa in the fall and that I would take photos to return to the kids at Vista del Mar. Amazing! My heart exploded and splattered all over the walls. One kid drew a hamburger on his shirt ("In case the kids are hungry") and a diamond ("Because I want them to know that is what their lives are worth").
Cue the tears.
Another kid wrote, "My parents told me never to give up. Keep chasing your dreams."
Cue the tissues.
In the third session we made tribal jewelry for the kids to represent themselves or their "tribes." I showed them the necklace the Masaai had made for me along with other representations of tribal necklaces and bracelets. The kids descended on the supply table like hungry hyenas; the 30 kids at Vista del Mar felt like 3,000!
They were all engaged and busy making their tribal jewelry. It was great!
The kids really got the idea of a "theme" and I thought to myself, “Life just doesn't get better than this."
This is a picture taken on the corner of Hell & Nowhere in the middle of the night when our van ended up in a swamp. Several groups of locals came by to help us to no avail (the van weighed 5,000 pounds), until finally one group refused to leave us until we were safe. These people waded into the swamp and lifted the van out of the murky bog. I am just out of frame on the right. Jordan took the picture of the joyous celebration that followed: look at the joy on everyone's faces! Look at the intersecting black and white hands clasping each other in true brotherhood.
And once again, I was amazed by just how good life can be.
