"COM-MIX AND MARVEL"

May 10, 2008
7:30 p.m. --10:30 p.m.
Geppi's Entertainment Museum –Camden Yards
Tickets are $75/person in advance, $85/person at the door; please call 410.366.8886 for more information and to purchase tickets.

On October 6, 2007, Randi Alper Pupkin, Founder and Executive Director of Art with a Heart, Inc., received The Distinguished Alumni Award from Lynchburg College. The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes Lynchburg College Alumni who have shown outstanding contributions to one or more areas of society, including professional, academic, and personal achievements, as well as service to the College.

Art with a Heart has completed two years of its innovative Summer Job Program. In 2007, the Program was expanded in both its reach to East and West Baltimore and the number of participants from 14 to 45. Participants of Art with a Heart's Summer Job Program met every day for four weeks and produced marketable works of art while learning job skills. As part of the program, students received a daily stipend for their work, were taught workplace protocols and job skills and spent a day job shadowing at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore. The various art products were sold at Artscape, (Baltimore's premier art festival) with the proceeds given to the community in which the work was created. This experience not only provided tangible work opportunities for the participants who created, priced and sold the items, but also provided an opportunity for the participants to collectively give back to their communities. This year, the participating youth from East and West Baltimore worked together to sell their merchandise. By the end of Artscape, these young people had cooperatively sold $3,453.00 in products that they had created.

Art with a Heart's Summer Job Program gives participants a sense of belonging and accomplishment that they clearly need and value. Stacey, a 2007 Summer Job Program participant said, "This program taught me so many things. It taught me that I am creative and hard working. It taught me to feel good about myself, it taught me that people care about me, it taught me that I can accomplish something if I try and it taught me that there are opportunities for me. Art with a Heart showed me things that I did not know and now I feel like I have a chance to change things for myself."

In November 2008, James, another Art with a Heart Summer Job Program participant, celebrated his one year anniversary as a full-time employee at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore. Unmotivated and unemployed prior to the Art with a Heart Summer Job Program, this constructive and encouraging "work" experience gave James the confidence to apply for a job at the Hyatt Regency.

Art with a Heart conducted a "program of giving" with middle school students from Washington Village, a community described by the 2000 US Census as the seventh largest concentration of urban poverty in the United States. During a four month period, Art with a Heart engaged the students in art-based community service projects. Each month had a different focus, i.e. children, adults, community and family. Each art project was designed as a gift for others in need. Upon completion, the students delivered the art gifts to the Ronald McDonald House, the Lapidus Cancer Institute at Sinai Hospital, neighborhood residents and to a special woman in their lives. Art with a Heart presented each student with a special community service certificate for their kindness, compassion, dedication and hard work.