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Location: Suffield, Connecticut, USA
Date: Thursday, 5 April 2007
Micol Martini

I did KEEPS in Suffield, Connecticut a suburban town of about 13,500 located outside of Hartford, Connecticut. A friend of mine from home (Jordan) and I did the project at my brother's house, where he lives with his wife and their three children, Micaela, Alessia and Massimo. We invited kids from the neighborhood and some of Micaela's friends from school.

The process of getting KEEPS underway in Suffield was quite a contrast to Bintang in the Gambia where we were allowed immediate access to students. In Suffield it was definitely vital for families to be informed beforehand and give consent, though many parents were eager about the project. To prepare for the project, we set up "stations" in the garage for the kids to have individual spaces to paint.

On Thursday I picked Micaela, Camille, Dominique and Kennedy up from school and brought them back to the house. The rest of the kids either took the bus to the neighborhood or were dropped off by their parents. Once everyone got there we began the game, which we adapted to fit to the appropriate age of the group as most kids were a bit older (around 10). We arranged to split the kids into two teams and go on a scavenger hunt for clues, at the end of which they found a "prize." Each clue had a "leader" written on the front of the clue and that person was supposed to guide the team for that round. Jordan took one team (Alessia, Dominique, Kennedy, Erin and Michael) and I took the other (Micaela, Kelly, Olivia, Camille and Savanah) and we helped them a bit and divided the prizes (lollipops) at the end. The kids seemed to really enjoy the game and were very enthusiastic about finding the clues. They worked well in teams with leaders, which allowed some of the younger kids to have a role. Then we all sat down in the living room and everyone went around and said their name and I explained the question. I asked them to raise their hands when they were ready to paint. When they all had raised hands, we took them to the garage and they each took a "station" and started painting. While they painted I went around and talked to the kids individually about their paintings and families. The kids seemed to really enjoy the painting and a lot of them had clearly spent some time before the project thinking about their answers. They put a lot of effort and detail into their pictures, which were really thoughtful. The outcome was fairly different from the Bintang where a lot of paintings showed natural elements. In Suffield, many of the kids painted family and friends.


Kennedy
Age: 10
Painting: "Family"
Kennedy lives with 2 older sisters and her mom and dad. Her dad owns a construction company where her mom works as well. Her father is from Connecticut and her mother is from Maryland.

Olivia and Savanah
Ages: 10 (Olivia) and 11 (Savanah)
Painting: Olivia drew "school" and Savanah drew "playing outside with her dog pepper"
Olivia and Savanah live with their younger brother, their mom and dad. Their dad owns a restaurant and their mom works there on Friday and Saturdays. Their mom is from Virginia and their dad is Iranian.

Michael and Kelly
Ages: 7 (Kelly) and 9 (Michael "Mike")
Painting: Michael drew "the Yankees" (American baseball team from New York) while Kelly drew her "favorite hobby, soccer"
Michael and Kelly live with their sister Erin and their mom and dad. Their mom works at a company in West Hartford and their dad works in a prison. Their parents are from Connecticut.

Erin
Age: 10
Painting: "family and friends"
Erin lives with her brother, mother and father. Her dad is an accountant and her mother is a project manager who also runs marathons. They are both from Connecticut.

Alessia and Micaela
Ages: 5 (Alessia) and 10 (Micaela)
Painting: Alessia painted "family and animals" while Micaela painted "family, house and friends"
Alessia and Micaela live with their mom, dad and brother. Their mom stays home and their dad works at an insurance company. Their dad is from Italy and their mom is from Hawaii.

Camille
Age: 11
Painting: "Family"
Camille's mom stays home and her father is a business executive. Her parents are from Denmark and she was born in New Zealand. She has lived in Suffield for 3 years.

Dominique
Age: 10
Painting: "Friends and family"
Dominique lives with her mom, step-dad, sister and brother. She has another house where her father and step-mother live.  Her step-father is a construction worker and her mom is a bartender. Her dad is a landscaper and her step-mom works at a company in Connecticut.They are from Connecticut.

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Click here to see all the photos from this project

Mary Kathryn Wyle
KEEPS Day Write-up

I attended university in a small North Carolina town with strong ties to the nearby Ada Jenkins Center, a community organization providing health, social, and especially education services to the lower income citizens of the county.  Several of my friends volunteered at their food bank or tutored children for the after school program, but I, for one reason or another, never became personally involved.  When I heard about KEEPS, however, I immediately thought of Ada Jenkins, and after a few emails I made contact with Diane Means, director of their after school program.  Not wanting to rush the kids to fit KEEPS into an abbreviated week day time slot, I arranged to run KEEPS on a Saturday, and Diane began advertising it to the after school program children.  She warned me, however, that Ada Jenkins had a history of poor Saturday attendance—though plenty of children seemed interested in KEEPS, she told me to hope for five participants.  I crossed my fingers for more.

Saturday arrived and everything was running smoothly—I’d prepped the script, prepared the snacks, set up the paints—but only two girls arrived.  Makayla and Tyresha, however, more than made up for their missing peers.  Over Legos and a game of “hot potato” we got to know one another: Tyresha told me about her new baby brother and her recent birthday (a bowling alley party proved too expensive, so it remained a family affair), while Makayla informed me that her school had recently won a prize for excellence in North Carolina.  Together, we built some very unseaworthy Lego boats.

Both girls took to the painting with gusto, occasionally enquiring about color mixing but generally intent on their work.  Makayla finished her painting, of the blue ribbon her school had recently won, in about ten minutes, and made it her job to keep Tyresha supplied with an ever increasing array of colors.  Tyresha, meanwhile, gradually sketched out her family until their smiling faces filled the canvas.  As Tyresha’s family took shape, Makayla and I described our own families to Tyresha.  A friend of mine arrived in the midst of the painting, bearing her camera, and Tyresha and Makayla were only too happy to pose with their artwork.  After setting their canvases aside to dry and cleaning up the buffet of color that Makayla had created, we turned snacks-for-ten into snacks-for-two and debated the relative merits of jelly bean flavors and girl scout cookies.  After hugs and thank yous and promises to send pictures, we all returned home.

I’m curious what it is about the weekend that makes it so hard for Ada to find children.  On a weekday afternoon there is no shortage of kids, from the time school gets out until the last parent leaves work.  Speaking with Diane after my KEEPS weekend, she shook her head and related how nothing seemed to work on weekends: not free tickets to baseball games or amusement parks, not basketball clinics, or, apparently, art projects.  Ada Jenkins contributes to the community in countless ways both great and small, but for whatever reason, the weekend wall seems insurmountable.  Are the parents working, or too tired to bring their kids in?  Are the children content to watch TV rather than leaving the house?  Many of the children live within walking distance of the center, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some American mentality that accounted for their absence—apathy? Parental over-protection?  Too few hours in the day?   I shared a day with two wonderful little girls, but for every answer Tyresha and Makayla gave me, I found myself formulating twice as many questions that can’t be answered, as the respondents just weren’t there.

Ada Jenkins Contact Information:
www.adajenkins.org
The Ada Jenkins Center
PO Box 1842
Davidson, NC 28036

In addition to after school care, the Ada Jenkins center runs “Loaves and Fishes,” a neighborhood food bank; Ada provides job search assistance, translation help for the area’s rising Latino population, a free dental and free medical clinic, and contacts to many other local charitable organizations with other specialties.

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