Delaware College of Arts and Design students, faculty, staff and friends recently spent time filling arts kits and writing encouraging notes for 200 children in crisis.
The Jefferson Awards Foundation partners with mayors around the country to spread award-winning local youth community service projects nationwide.
JAF National Director Michelle Fidance says in Wilmington the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs recruited D-CAD and others to bring this year’s winner - Emma’s Arts Kits - to the First State.
“This was a project started by a young girl in Indianapolis….her name is Emma Stumpf. Emma was the winner of the Jefferson Awards LEAD360 challenge back in March. The LEAD360 Challenge is a national service contest that we ask youth around the country to tell us things that are important to them and how they’re trying to change them in their community,” Fidance said.
Stumpf is 15-years-old and has been battling brain cancer for seven years. She started Emma’s Arts Carts in 2014 at the hospital where she was treated and is now expanding it to bring art kits to children in shelters, foster homes and hospitals nationwide.
Locally, children will receive their arts kits in early January, through various non-profits recruited and vetted by the Jefferson Awards Foundation. The non-profits include homeless shelters, hospitals and crisis centers statewide, as well as the Wilmington Police Department and Exception Care for Children, a care facility in Newark for children who need constant 24/7 monitoring.
And Emma will be honored at the Jefferson Awards Foundation's national ceremony in New York City on March 15 as its LEAD360 contest winner.
To date, Emma’s Arts Carts has delivered 2,500 art kits around the country.
You can read more about the program here.
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from theDelaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
