Love My Neighbor Day with Bank of America at the Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration in the City of Carson

The bucolic village at the foot of the mountain in the El Salvador jungle.  The incoming fire of rockets and mortar grenades.  The house hit and on fire.  The people running from it in horror.  This is the image by 13 year old Krystina depicting the story of her grandparents in our LoveMyNeighbor art tent at  the City of Carson Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration . The raw testimonial power of the image simply cannot leave any viewer indifferent.  The great communicative power of Art.

There were a number of works of a remarkably meaningful visual impact depicting personal family stories of children's’ great parents and great great parents which is the real world meaning of the strange word “heritage” that none of the kids knew the meaning of before.

I am deeply grateful to a remarkable group of Bank of America volunteers from Better Money Habits community outreach program who in the scorching heat worked with amazing dedication, non-stop and as long as needed.

Even inside my 20’ x 40’ tent it felt like broiling but Anh, Gwen, Maria, Sandy, Miguel and the whole team worked their hearts out tirelessly assisting me with kids and giving free financial advice to parents.

In our unique colaboration with the City of Carson and Bank of America we really developed a unique model when children  can experience art making in the professional setting, often for the first time in their lives.

There is no time to teach them how to make art in those setting, but it is an opportunity to give them an experience of being an artist. Once guided, the kids once and again show an amazing capacity for grasping the idea and purely on their own convert it into a viable and compelling visual image, producing content driven form which is a big thing to me in my own art.

Art is inherent in the way we, the humans, process the world.  Looking at amazingly powerful Krystina’s image proves it yet again. 

Launching Love My Neighbor® Day "Scottdsale" With Bank of America and Victory Outreach

Enormously excited about the new great initiative and collaboration that we launched centered on my public art project in Carson’s tough “Scottsdale” neighborhood.  We started the Love My Neighbor Day as celebration of community in a unique personal collaboration with Bank of America.  

Our Scottsdale’s Love My Neighbor Day in collaboration with Victory Outreach, our Artward! Initiative and Bank of America’s Better Money Habits went better than all our expectations. 

Knowing full well how difficult it is to get any attention in Scottsdale and how even more difficult to turn it into a participation - makes what we did even more meaningful.

We had 20 to 25 kids participating in the art program.  Huge number for Scottsdale.  That included some tough and trouble kids.  It was difficult but we did it as even the hardest to get attention kids ended up getting engaged in art making.

While kids were doing art the group their parents had a unique chance to participated in the Better Money Habits with Bank of America specialists.  This group of residents took advantage of a unique opportunity to get an in-depth personal financial advise from some of BoA’s top regional and local execs.  5 executives worked with residents individually.

Huge kudos go to Victory Outreach for their work on the ground to build trust and communication with residents and kids and manage attendance while Artward and BoA provided unique additional programs.  Just as we believed, this proved to be a powerful and effective collaboration worth every bit of long hard work that went into it.

The most amazing part of BoA collaboration is that their participants are companies’ veterans of outreach, passionate about the local community and diversity, some having a multi-decade Carson experience.  They knew full well what Scottsdale is. 

This unique program left deep impression in “Scottsdale” and making serious impact.  The influence of local Piru gang on kids and residents has now a unique alternative.

 

 

Scottsdale knows it’s a new age there and that it turns the corner.

Thank you, BoA for showing what it is to engage in real community. 

Together we create impact.  It works.  Art is Power.