When a creative adventure is calling to you and your family, a great way to spend your time is to create art for charity.
Handmade art in the form of cards, small posters, or even canvases can be created and donated to worthy organizations and causes.
One of these causes is Color>Give>Smile.
Their concept is simple: connect volunteers with opportunities to donate their creations to the senior homes in their area.
I see Jen and her team like an art + volunteerism concierge – they find the right places and people to receive your handmade creations.
Like many wonderful initiatives, the founder Jen has a very personal story behind her why she started Color>Give>Smile.
Hers is also a story of how someone else’s small gesture inspired her to take action.
The Story Behind Color>Give>Smile
It was 2010 and Jen’s grandfather was becoming less mobile. So Jen’s grandmother had the wonderful idea to enlist the grandchildren to provide motivation with pictures, created by them, of the exercises her grandfather needed to do.
Her grandmother also asked the grandchildren to make additional things that would keep him connected and engaged like mailing him letters or creating t-shirts for him.
After learning the t-shirt she made for her grandfather was one of his favorite things, saw realized how happy these handmade creations made her grandfather.
In addition to this family experience, she also worked in a senior center where she saw a different side of aging.
It was here that she witnessed how isolated many seniors become due, in large part, to their family having moved away over the course of their lives.
It was here that she also met a woman who introduced her to micro-volunteering, which (at a high level) consists of breaking volunteer experiences and opportunities into smaller, more manageable tasks.
When the concept of micro-volunteering was combined with creating and delivering handmade art to seniors, Color>Give>Smile was born.
How Does Color>Give>Smile Work?
The beauty of Color>Give>Smile is that they take all of the guesswork out of determining the who, what, and where of focusing your creativity and volunteer efforts on the elderly.
The process is four simple steps:
- Contact Jen to let her know you’re interested and provide her with your local zip code.
- Receive a (super prompt!) response and recommendation (or two, even) from Jen based on the zip code you provided.
- Create artwork using one of your own ideas or those suggested by Color>Give>Smile (some are detailed below).
- Deliver your beautiful artwork to the contact and location Jen provided.
Create Art For Charity
The opportunities for artwork are endless, really. It can be as simple as a handmade card and as difficult as a painted watercolor or acrylic on canvas.
To get you started, Color>Give>Smile suggests projects like these:
– Watercolor pictures
– Paintings using painters tape
– Awesome animal drawings
– Toddler art
This list is just a start, however, because when you create art for charity you may try whatever medium moves you.
Share The Goods
What would you create as your first project for Color>Give>Smile and seniors in your area?