For the past 10 years, Lutheran Northwest student artists have been participating in an extraordinary program called The Memory Project. What is The Memory Project? Their website describes it this way:

“The Memory Project is a charitable nonprofit organization that invites art teachers, art students, and solo artists to help cultivate global kindness by creating portraits for children around the world who have faced substantial challenges, such as violence, war, extreme poverty, neglect, and loss of parents. Our participants create these portraits to help children feel valued and important, to know that many people care about their well-being, and to provide a special childhood memory in the future. Since 2004 we have created more than 130,000 portraits for children in 47 countries.”

Over the years, Lutheran Northwest portraits have been given to children in Peru, Guatemala, Nepal, India, Haiti, Ethiopia, Ukraine, and the Philippines. Check out the video above for the story on how children in the Philippines received this school year’s portraits, and enjoy some portraits from previous years below.