On Friday I had orientation for Passion Works. It went swimmingly; the director acted warmly and the artists I saw seemed enthusiastic. I only had two slight hang-ups. One--I'm definitely no artist. Volunteers are expected to assist with drawing and painting, as well as many other motor-intensive tasks at which I claim absolutely no aptitude. But alas, it's a learning opportunity. Two, the director told me to write strictly "positive" things about the artists.

At first, I balked at this command. How could I keep things "real" if I wrote on a sunny, superficial level the whole time? After a few minutes, however, I reconsidered: by "positive," I don't think she meant to gloss over the artists' shortcomings. She simply wants me to write respectfully, compassionately. Of course I'm not going to dwell on the fact that these artists have disabilities; that would be redundant.

To use her words, I'm going to write from a "people first" perspective, conveying the stories of artists who happen be disabled, and not disabled people who happen to be artists. By the same token, that doesn't mean I'll avoid the fact of disability. It's just going to be a secondary consideration.

I took pictures of various fixtures on display, but unfortunately, due to technical issues, I'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to post them.

On another note, while researching poverty in Athens, I turned up an interesting statistic. As of 2007, 65% of people in Athens earned income below the poverty level, and 41% of residents earned income below 50% of the poverty level--a discomfiting fact to say the least.

More on that, stay tuned for the next post (after I post the slideshow), where I interview a local church about their free lunch program.

Intro Redux

Howdy! For those who followed my last blog, this might inspire a bit of deja vu. For the unacquainted, I'll recap quickly: I was supposed to write a blog about my experiences volunteering at a nursing home, and about nursing homes in general. That didn't work out, as the administrators denied my request to write about the residents.

Now I'm volunteering somewhere else--Passion Works, an art shop that employs developmentally disabled people. With this blog I hope to broaden my scope a bit--I want to discuss the plight of the disadvantaged in general, including those with mental illness, in poverty, developmentally disabled or otherwise. The crux of the blog will still be about my experience volunteering, however: I want to write the stories of the people whom I help, as I don't think the media affords them much coverage.

More to the point, I think people often skirt or gloss over the issue of developmental disability because they are afraid of how to handle it--specifically, they're afraid of hurting someone's feelings. With this blog, I'm trying to, if you pardon the pun, paint a realistic picture of these people's reality, so that readers may perhaps understand their plight more fully.

That said, I look forward to starting volunteering next week. I'll leave you with a link to a recent story in The Post that mentioned the Athens Photographic Project, an initiative sponsored by NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Health, that setup a photography class for the mentally ill. You can find it here. Ciao, bella!