CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM
Island Pacific Academy kindergarten students Kalena Spotkaeff, Rachel Novak and Madison Matsumoto customize rubber slippers being sent to shoeless children in Iraq.
|
|
Fancy footwear
Students at Island Pacific Academy decorate slippers for Iraqi schoolchildren
Students at a Kapolei elementary school will adorn hundreds of little feet in Iraq with decorated slippers this Christmas.
Island Pacific Academy students from kindergarten through fifth grade are decorating 280 pairs of slippers in a project to help children in Iraq who can't attend school because they don't have footwear.
"Basically, I wanted to do a project to show how art can help change the world," said Jordan Dodson, the art teacher who designed the project. The kids were excited when they learned they would be helping other kids go to school, the 27-year-old said.
Dan White, headmaster of IPA, which is in its third year, called it a fabulous idea and said it supports a motto of his: "Whenever you can, help."
Dodson designs a project annually to teach children they can make a difference and imagined the slipper project while talking to her husband, Capt. Clint Dodson, currently deployed in Iraq with the Army's 25th Infantry Division.
Two years ago, while a teacher at Waipahu Elementary, Dodson had her class tie-dye backpacks, fill them with school supplies and ship them to Afghanistan, where her husband handed them out.
The couple hoped to do something similar for the children in Iraq while working together on a project during the holiday season.
"It just seems a lot easier with the whole deployment thing if we're working on something together," she said.
Dodson's husband suggested she send shoes after playing soccer with Iraqis with barefoot Iraqi children.
She researched the idea online and found that Iraqi children need shoes to attend school. So she agreed.
IPA's 280 elementary school children are spending one week decorating the slippers with colored beads, strings, and ornaments, while studying a map of Iraq and talking about its culture and what kids there might be doing.
"It's amazing even the youngest kids understand why they're doing this," said Dirk Minami, whose daughter attends the fourth grade. "They get to put their names on the slippers -- they know where it's going."
He added, "No two slippers are alike."
Minami said the project "creatively lets them do their art lessons while learning to reach out and do something a little extra."
Andrew McCarthy, 10, a fifth grader at IPA, decorated his slippers with red velvet and colored wires.
"I think it'll help them feel better because they don't have shoes and stuff and they can't afford it," he said. "I really wanted to help because on the news people were bombing them and stuff."
Second grader Jake Shatzer, 7, added: "I felt pretty good to be doing something for someone that didn't have anything. I was excited."
Dodson purchased the slippers from Longs and Wal-Mart, along with the decorative materials, using her own money.
"It was something my husband and I wanted to do ourselves," she said.
The school principal's husband, who is in the Navy, will help Dodson ship the gifts to Iraq, where her husband, the Army captain, will distribute them.
"Pretty much the way it works there is the kids get so excited when they see the soldiers are there to hand out anything," she said. "There is a big crowd of kids and they just hand everything out."