Over 60 works created by students of The WYE Project’s REFLECTIONS: Portraits of Who I Am Workshop Series are on display at the St. Cloud Veteran’s Memorial Library through the end of November.
The series was presented by The WYE (World Youth Expo) Project, Inc. in collaboration with the St. Cloud Boys & Girls Club during the Club’s 2023 Summer Camp program. The students, ages 13-16, were encouraged to explore who they are through the process of “creative expression.”
The program served 32 students over the course of seven weeks, during which they were encouraged to explore inner self through imagination and creativity, mostly in the abstract.
With the facilitation of a coordinator and two student interns, the youths were encouraged to explore their strengths; their weaknesses; facing their fears; and aspiring to better things by expressing it all through the strokes of a paintbrush. Many of the works show surprising maturity, given the young ages of the artists. And the end results also demonstrate the effectiveness of a successful collaboration between two entities working together with similar goals for the community’s youths.
Funding for the workshops was provided to The WYE Project (WYEP) through a private benefactor given to the non-profit organization in 2022. The WYE Project, Inc. is community-based dedicated to youth development, especially of youths at the poverty threshold or at-risk. It first presented similar workshops last year for the Kissimmee Parks & Recreation summer camp program.
For more info about WYEP, visit www.thewyeprojectinc.org.
