From Hill Middle School to Darfur with love

To Karen Popovich's art students, the large canvas tent in their classroom is a community art project and an opportunity to help.

To refugees in Darfur, Sudan, the vibrant tent is intended to be a learning space and a symbol of hope and freedom.

For the last three weeks Hill Middle School art students have worked with Northern Illinois University art students and DeKalb's Hope Haven Homeless Shelter to create a Tent of Hope.

Tents of Hope is a nationwide community-based art project designed to raise awareness about the genocidal war currently occurring in Darfur and to advocate assistance for the refugees struggling to survive there.

"I had never heard of this situation before, but we've been learning about it through the project," said eighth-grade art student Alyssa Burns of Naperville. "Now we can help open other peoples' eyes to the tragedy over there."

NIU professor Mira Reisberg was encouraged by a friend to join the project but said she knew it would require the help of a team and several resources. So she called on Hill art teacher Popovich, who is mentoring a student teacher from NIU.

"NIU's art program focuses on visual cultural education with an emphasis on multiculturism and community," Reisberg said. "I was impressed with how (Popovich) teaches her students the same way so I asked if we could team up and let our students work together."

Since deciding to team up, Popovich said her students have enjoyed working with the college students to tell the story of refugees through art on the tent's walls.

A mural on one side represents the refugees walking away from the refugee camps and toward their rebuilt communities in the background. The other side features words including "lost" and "displaced" intertwined with more positive messages like "peace" and "hope."

The students will present their tent to the community at 7 p.m. today in a public reception at Hill Middle School, 1836 Brookdale Road, Naperville.

Reisberg and some of her students then will take the tent to Washington, D.C., where it will join hundreds of other tents from across the country in the national Gathering of Tents exhibit Nov. 7 to 9 at the National Mall.

At the conclusion of the exhibit, all of tents will be packaged and shipped to Darfur, where they will be used as both homes and classrooms.

"Children will learn in ours and that's really cool," said Hill eighth-grader Maren Eriksen-Russo. "It's nice to know that we can create art, even if it is just a tent, and turn that tent into an opportunity to help kids."