The United for Kids Foundation, one of my favourite charities organised a fund raising ball for their 2013 project calender. By direct intervention, these projects provide educational and health relief materials to kids from no/low income families through campaigns such as- back to school, summer camp, field trips to multinationals, just to mention a few. More significantly, it has provided 'free access' to otherwise 'no access'areas for these kids.
Raising money for any cause can be tricky business, literally-your imagination must run wild. When I heard about auctioning the kids art works as part of the fund raising event, I imagined it would be a fun project to organise. However, the realities on ground were (a) we needed funds to get the art materials and frame the drawings, (b) the public schools UKF works with don't offer art classes. While still trying to get donors for the project, two angels came to our rescue, one gave the needed funds, and the other provided the materials. Once the summer break was over, we organised dates for the school visits, only to be told some days later that the teachers had embarked on a strike-thankfully, that was short lived.
Despite dashing across a motorway and hopping on a bike (2 things I have sworn off), I arrived at Ojodu primary schools in a piece. It was the first day of resumption at Ojodu and there seemed to be a lot of activities going on. Kemi, the UFK officer was familar with the kids and staff- she organised access to the library (built by UKF) and also identified the kids from the library club to take part in the art project. We had no way of knowing which kids were good artistically, so we decided to let the kids draw and paint whatever they felt confident in.
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| Young artists from Adebule Primary School keeping busy |
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| Rasheedah (both of her drawings were selected) from Adebule Primary |
We started the session with 20 kids, and it was quite easy to spot those with raw talents. Some three hours after, we had found our Davincis- believe me, these kids are good. With minimal supervision, no previous art classes, I saw Simba, Zazoo and Nahla from The Lion King come to life, so did Pinocchio and The Three Little Pigs to mention a few. Anthony, a primary 6 boy that was doing great with the map of Africa got a little bit jaded towards the end- he had to paint all the individual countries- the prospects of that task got him crying out- am tired! We somehow managed to get a finished drawing from him. The next day, we replicated the same steps at Adebule Primary School. Although more challenging for the kids was the fact that there was no access to the library (also built and maintained by UKF) this meant that we had couldn't use the colourful and inspirational books like we did at Ojodu. The kids at Adebule made do with text books instead. At the end of another successful session with the kids, we were left to select the best from the pack. With a limited budget for the framing, only the works that exhibited some level of technique made it through. I know it may sound a bit unfair expecting 'techniques' from kids with no formal training, otherwise we would have ended up with the rainbow coalition.
Even though these drawings are from kids aged between 9 - 14 years, we wanted to treat their works like we would that of professionals. We got the drawings off to an art studio for final estimates on the framing. My experienced artist friend was generous enough to give us professional advice on which drawings to drop, and also gave us good deals for the final works. A few tweaks here and there, we finalised on 16 drawings from 11 students. On the day of the ball, I picked up the drawings and was supper impressed with the complete package- if only the kids could see what their works had been transformed into. We set up a display of the drawings complete with description cards and some even displayed on easels- they were beautiful, absolutely proud of these young ones. Before the auction began, the first purchase was made for The Lion King Threesome- that was clearly a collectors item. The auction was great, 8 of the works went to the highest bidders, a further 2 were sold after the auction. In total, we sold 11 out of 16 drawings. The remaining 5 would be auctioned at the US ball organised for 2013.
I never at any point thought we would have generated as much as we did for the final sales figure. To those individuals who showed great support by believing in these kids works and paying good money for them, I say thank you- you are amazing. Not only will the sale proceeds provide back to school packs for the kids, it will also instil in them a sense of pride and encourage them to reach higher. After all if Aunty Ameenah could pay 40,000 naira for Promise's drawing, and Aunty Tayo could also pay 30,000 naira for Victor's Pinocchio- the sky certainly is their limit.
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