Katie Jeffries, an artist who frequents Opus North Vancouver, recently approached us with a request for art supplies to teach art classes to children in the Sambhodi Orphanage and School in Sri Lanka—one of those hit by the Tsunami in 2004.

Below is a personal excerpt from a recent email about her volunteer experiences there.

This journey was such a rewarding experience and a huge culture shock! We arrived in Colombo and drove for 3 hours the first day and the second day another 2-1/2 hours to reach our destination. This area of coastline is hugely populated and extremely run down with gravesites on the side of the road, demolished houses, people living in tents and wood and metal shacks. Cows, goats and stray dogs walk at the side and in the road with people trying to sell their wares.

I was asked on the Wednesday morning of my first week, to teach an art class. A little nervous and unprepared, I said I'd love to! Within minutes, the teenage children were re-arranging the middle section of the school. I watched as 50 or more children and teachers found a seat, their happy faces and eyes turned to me, excited and ready to start. The children, aged 6 to 18, all face their own challenges—physical, mental, some deaf and partially blind.

Because of the large class size, there was some scrambling while we found more palettes and mixed the powder paint with water, cut and folded paper in half and shared the brushes. All of these art supplies were generously donated by Opus! I chose butterflies as a theme, for their colour and shape, for this first class.

I thought it would interest the children to make a symmetrical butterfly by applying paint to one half and folding. The children were so enthusiastic to learn and excited to see the butterfly take shape once the paper was folded. Some of them even did their own thing! I said so many hondas (good) and lassannas (beautiful) that morning, and the smiles of both the teachers and the students went from ear to ear. Many of the children stayed through lunch and part of the afternoon to cut out the butterflies and glue them to the walls. How lovely and colourful they looked.

The children asked everyday to paint while I was there. I had so much fun and these wonderful memories will stay with me forever—it was lassanna. I have to go back!