CRIS Mural Project
Service Event Reflection
27 October 2019, 1pm-4pm, Westerville, OH
I attended this service project with Caitlyn. It was a project organized by CRIS, Community Refugee and Immigration Services, at an elementary school in Westerville, which is about a 30 minute drive from campus. The project was to finish three murals that the students had started painting on a wall in the school. One of the murals was a design containing a quote from Gandhi and the other two were trees, for which the students had made laminated leaves with encouraging notes that students could pick from when they need one. I spent most of my time cutting out the laminated leaves so I got to read many of the notes and sayings written by the students. I thought it was cool how many of them wrote in a variety different languages, trying to be inclusive of their classmates who came from different backgrounds. The art teacher at the school told us that school has a lot of students from immigrant families and that the transition can be very hard for those students, especially when they may not speak English very well, which makes projects like this one so important. One quote a student wrote that I particularly liked was “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”