Art for Gorillas

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jul 07 2009 | By: Julie

As part of our series of lessons on staying healthy, AoC is teaching students about the importance of eating a varied diet that balances starchy carbohydrates, protein, and vitamin-rich vegetables like spinach and broccoli. In Rwanda, most people’s diets are very heavy in starchy carbohydrates like potatoes and cassava, foods which provide energy and are cheap and easy to grow but are nutritionally poor. Unlike other African countries, we rarely see starving children in Rwanda but we do see a lot of undersized and weak kids who have most likely suffered from nutritionally-poor diets most of their lives.

While AoC can’t change the habits of our students’ parents, who are ultimately responsible for their diets, we still feel it’s important to educate the children about good nutrition so that the kids can make smart decisions when given a choice about food. We also encourage students to share the lessons with their parents in hopes that the whole family may develop healthier eating habits.

A selection of watercolors showing children eating a variety of foods, especially fresh vegetables.

A second collage of watercolors.

One student’s art work showing healthy foods including leafy vegetables, beans, fruit, meat, and milk.

Students view each other’s paintings, which are laid out on a table to dry.

Tags: one-health, staying healthy

One response so far

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jul 04 2009 | By: Julie

Brush Teeth at Least Twice Daily

For the third and final blog in this series, here are photos and art work by the children depicting how they use the water from their rainwater tanks to brush their teeth at least twice per day.

A collage of watercolors illustrating tooth brushing.

This painting clearly shows the use of water in tooth brushing to rinse the mouth.

Another watercolor collage. See how some drawings try to show that the act of tooth brushing should be done at least twice per day, once in the morning and once at night.

Students work on their paintings in class.

Tags: one-health, staying healthy

No responses yet

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jul 03 2009 | By: Julie

Cleaning Classrooms, Toilets, and the Rainwater Tank

For the second blog in my Staying Healthy Where There Is No Running Water series, here are photos and art work by the children depicting how they use the water from their rainwater tanks to clean the school facilities.

School teacher Michel hauls an arm full of brooms with red bristles donated by AoC. These and other supplies will be used to clean the school facilities.

It is customary in Rwandan government run schools for the students, as opposed to the teachers, to clean the classrooms and toilets. The illustrations above show everyone joining in the cleaning.

Illustration of cleaning toilet stalls with a mop and a broom. AoC has suggested that the schools also drop ash down the toilets to reduce the odor and help in decomposing fecal matter.

I paint numbers on all brooms and other supplies to indicate which classroom or toilet stall each belongs. After doing an initial inspection to see if teachers are following through with the numbering system it’s clear it will be a challenge. Unfortunately, I think in situations where people are used to receiving a lot of aid, the ethic of shared responsibility is weak.

We ask students to illustrate their acts of good hygiene to stress that these simple habit forming activities for staying healthy are not just folly. The students creating these paintings must surely be grasping this reality better.

Beautiful buckets, jerry cans, and locally made soap are marked with the schools name and classroom number. I go out of my mind with how some school supplies simply ‘walk off’ and disappear. We are definitely trying to discourage that!

Tags: one-health, staying healthy

No responses yet

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jul 02 2009 | By: Julie

This blog is the first in a three-part series showing how the children and teachers at AoC’s schools are using their newly installed rainwater tanks to stay healthy. The past few weeks AoC has been working with the schools to teach the students and staff proper maintenance and use of the tanks so that the water collected stays clean and fresh and is used only for the purposes of maintaining good hygiene and cleaning the school facilities.

To emphasize these lessons, we asked the children to paint watercolors illustrating how they use the rainwater tanks to stay healthy. Here is a selection of art and photographs from our lesson about hand-washing.

Illustration of a student using the locally made handwashing stations.

Where there is no running water or electricity, one must make do with what is available and affordable and also sustainable and ecologically friendly. At the two schools we work with, locally made hand-washing stations that use water collected from the rainwater tanks made the most sense.

Hand-washing stations are placed outside of each classroom so students can wash their hands before entering.

A mosaic of some of the children’s hand-washing paintings.

After receiving months of instructions about staying healthy and foundational art lessons taught by AoC instructor Eric, the children were ready to put together their new skills. When asked to illustrate hand washing, two girls went outside of the classroom to sketch the water tanks on their drawing boards. I was thrilled to see them taking this initiative and observing each other using the station so that they could make their depictions more lifelike.

More pictures done on small pieces of watercolor paper.

Tags: one-health, staying healthy

No responses yet

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jun 08 2009 | By: Julie

You may recall our request of support for the purchase of 2 rainwater tanks to be used to harvest much needed water at the two schools where we work. (Rainwater Tank Appeal-Kids Staying Healthy)

Fortunately our project was able to endow the purchase, installation, materials, cleaning supplies, and training for a tank per school. I must admit it’s been a much more elaborate activity than I first imagined!

The school directors acted swiftly with the arrangements of transporting the water tanks from Kigali to Kinigi. Once the big black plastic containers were offloaded and resting in the schoolyards, construction of a foundation and the installation process was speedy.

Now, over the next few weeks, we are conducting trainings on the maintenance and usage of the water tanks with the schools’ teachers. They will then take it upon themselves to create a schedule of when the schools’ classrooms and toilets will be cleaned using water from the water tanks and cleaning supplies donated by AoC. Additionally, the new hand-washing stations placed next to each classroom must be maintained with enough water and soap.

Innocent offloading the supplies needed for maintaining the water tanks and cleaning classrooms and toilets. Rushubi Primary School, Kinigi.

Our lesson for the day is finished, children return their drawing boards, and soon the school’s teachers with arrive for our first day of training. Jerry cans, plastic buckets, soap, towels, and more will be distributed to each classroom and block of toilets.

Getting down to business, Valerie translates during the training. Photo by Molly Feltner.

Teachers receive our manual which contain instructions on maintaining the rainwater tanks, the usage of the water, and a list of supplies needed to perform these activities.

We are providing much needed supplies to ensure that these schools are kept clean and sanitary. Sanitary schools means healthier students and a lesser risk of human-animal disease transmission. Brooms and mops for classrooms and toilets. Photo by Molly Feltner.

Tags: gorillas, staying healthy

No responses yet