Two Chenango Forks Students Win County Art Contest to Promote Inclusion and Kindness
April is Child Abuse Awareness Month, and the county’s Family Violence Prevention office offered a way for children to participate in promoting positive values.
“We thought it would be really cool for kids in the community to come up with ideas that illustrate kindness, inclusion, respect, individuality.” said Kristin Beylo, the Family Violence Prevention Coordinator of Broome County.
As a result, the “Making Room at our Table” contest was launched for students from all over the county to submit pieces of art that represented those values. Chenango Forks High School Art Teacher Lindsay Doolittle thought the contest would be great for her classes to give a try, whether they submitted it or not.
“When I saw the opportunity for this, I thought it was awesome for our students to be able to delve into this and create some cool artwork.” said Doolittle.
Nearly 80 submissions later, the council had its hands full. But after narrowing the pool down to the top 10 choices, they handed the vote off to the community. After upwards of 1,600 votes, the first place winner was 'Forks Freshman Da'Shaun Aldrich.
“With everything going on, and how we all are mad at each other, I thought that it was nice to represent that, no matter what we all need each other.” said Aldrich.
As a prize, Aldrich's photo and winning work of art will be featured on a billboard -- which was donated by "Park Outdoor" -- along I-81 for the whole month of April.
“I was pretty stoked about it.” he says.
The third place winner, was also a student from 'Forks -- Senior Cassidy Nowik, who earned a box of art utensils and other art items.
“I was grateful for getting third, I didn’t think that I was going to place at all, so that was cool.”
She wanted her piece to remind people of the importance of coming together.
“It just helps us come together as countries, because we have a lot of conflict in the world right now, and what we could use is some more unity and we’ve got to make some more room at our table.”