You Make the World a Better Place
PAGE 6
The educational goals, authored by Hoffberberger of the American Visionary Art Museum, are a call for creative action that each of us can apply to our own lives.
1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.
2. Engender respect for and delight in the gifts of others.
3. Increase awareness of the wide variety of choices available for all—particularly students.
4. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her own special knowledge and inner strengths.
5. Promote the use of innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration and creative self-reliance.
6. Confirm the greatest hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.
7. Empower the individual to choose to do that something really, really well.
Wangari Muta Maathai plants trees. In 1977, she planted nine trees in her backyard in Kenya and founded the Green Belt movement. She planted the trees to stop soil erosion and provide wood for cooking fires. She has been arrested, imprisoned and beaten for her efforts, and she has also won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari has organized more than 100,000 women in Kenya and surrounding countries to plant 30 million trees, so far. One tree at a time, these women are planting for a brighter future for themselves, their descendants and their country.
Sometimes cities can touch their residents in artful and healing ways too. When 18-year-old Tiffany Grant lost her life in a car accident at an intersection in downtown Baltimore, her mother simply could not go near the place, as it increased her feeling of pain and loss. But something unexpected changed that. The city erected a red-and-white street sign that read, "Tiffany Grant Way." The sign helped ease the mother's pain a little, and she was thankful.
1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.
2. Engender respect for and delight in the gifts of others.
3. Increase awareness of the wide variety of choices available for all—particularly students.
4. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her own special knowledge and inner strengths.
5. Promote the use of innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration and creative self-reliance.
6. Confirm the greatest hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.
7. Empower the individual to choose to do that something really, really well.
Wangari Muta Maathai plants trees. In 1977, she planted nine trees in her backyard in Kenya and founded the Green Belt movement. She planted the trees to stop soil erosion and provide wood for cooking fires. She has been arrested, imprisoned and beaten for her efforts, and she has also won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari has organized more than 100,000 women in Kenya and surrounding countries to plant 30 million trees, so far. One tree at a time, these women are planting for a brighter future for themselves, their descendants and their country.
Sometimes cities can touch their residents in artful and healing ways too. When 18-year-old Tiffany Grant lost her life in a car accident at an intersection in downtown Baltimore, her mother simply could not go near the place, as it increased her feeling of pain and loss. But something unexpected changed that. The city erected a red-and-white street sign that read, "Tiffany Grant Way." The sign helped ease the mother's pain a little, and she was thankful.
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