For 15 high school students from Wisconsin, United States, painting the faces of Filipino orphans and sending back the finished portraits to them is one way to put smiles on their faces.

The members of Green Bay Southwest High School Art Club worked hard on the portraits for two months, as per the school’s official Facebook page on Jan. 14. The students were all smiles while holding up the illustrations they created.

The art club teamed up with the Memory Project, a charitable nonprofit organization which calls for artists to create portraits for children facing violence, extreme poverty, neglect and loss of parents.

The organization, founded in 2004, was created to provide the children tangible “memories” to hold on to and to treasure, by means of portraits.

Using the photos sent by the organization, the students drew and painted the children’s faces. The organization provide artists with the following information regarding the children — their first name, age, country and favorite color — to help create the best portraits they can do.

The students will then send the finished artworks to the children alongside a letter and a photo of themselves. To protect the privacy of the orphans, neither the school nor the Memory Project divulged the exact locations, as well as the identities of the children. JB

Orphans know ‘kuya,’ not ‘Tebowing’