Columbus Global Academy has changed drastically from the last time Zoe S., Anne K., and I painted a mural there. Now, the school does not only serve the ESL (English as a Second Language) community, one-half of the school now has regular students. The school has an interesting little courtyard where students can relax, however it looked sort of glum. Someone, over a year ago, primed the grand staircase railings and didn’t paint over it. We simply had to paint the railings as well as brighten up the area a bit. Originally, the plan was to also paint a pattern on the back wall, however it rained on one of our workdays, and we were not able to execute our plan.

This time, we had a few grad-student volunteers, but our main group was a large number of young Nepali kids, who meet to practice their language, as well as their traditional dances. The kids wanted to paint a rainbow, so we decided to paint the steps in a rainbow gradient. While the adults were painting over the primer with a light blue to complement the rainbow, the kids were painting the steps. They were very focused upon painting the steps, however they were not focused on not painting everything else. Several children ended up completely covered in paint, and the treads of the steps were turned into a rainbow splatter design as they trod paint up and down while they were walking. Although we had to spend an hour or so cleaning up their mess, ultimately, it was worth it. The kids had a great time, we brightened up the courtyard.

In addition to painting the stairwell, we also painted some of the flower boxes and unpainted floor tiles. Even though it only took a day to do, it really brightened up the space. CRIS is an amazing organization, and I’m glad that I can donate a bit of my time to improve my community. I am going to continue to work with CRIS in mural projects, we already have more lined up for the future. It’s interesting how I got involved with painting these murals because I raised my hand at an IA community meeting, and now we’ve completed 3 with more on the way. I hope some of the kids were inspired to paint after they painted their school!