Art and Humanity 101-The Beach Review

Art and Humanity 101

By Teresa Hagen

In an age of information overload about global crises, the ability to help children affected by disease, poverty and abuse seems like an overwhelming task. But Carlos Silveira has found a way to bring empowerment, hope and smiles to impoverished children through the simple acts of drawing and painting.

“Art and play, I think, is the big answer,” Silveira, a CSULB professor of art education, said. “When you use art as a tool for education, it empowers the people you’re working with.”

This past January, Silveira and 27 CSULB students traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as part of a first-ever international service learning course, “Art, Environment and Social Action in Cambodia,” bringing humanitarian aid through art to HIV-positive children living in group homes and young women rescued from abuse and the sex trade. For most of the delegation, including the eight Cambodian-American students, it was their first experience with a developing country.

“The beauty of Cambodia is the presence of being there and experiencing this unexplainable feeling you get from the people and their culture,” said Sundy Ven, a Cambodian-American student who is majoring in biochemistry. “They love to smile and we reciprocate a warm feeling inside. It’s simply beautiful.”

Cambodia has only recently emerged from 30 years of civil wars and the Khmer Rouge atrocities, which left the country bereft of artists and educators. While the reminders of this tragic past are still visible throughout this country of more than 13 million people, there is an air of optimism and an entrepreneurial spirit that has taken over the capital city of Phnom Penh.

Businesses have sprouted on every corner, and, from morning to night, the people join the dance of traffic on their motos (motor scooters), mobile phones glued to their ears.

The globalization of Cambodia belies an undercurrent of neglected and abandoned children who are at the mercy of unscrupulous handlers. Sex trafficking is responsible for Cambodia having one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in Southeast Asia. While the incidence of AIDS has lessened in recent years, owing mainly to the rate of mortality, the number of orphans has increased.

According to John Tucker, director of Little Sprouts, a Maryknoll Catholic mission project that houses children with HIV-AIDS, there will be 145,000 orphans resulting from their parents dying from AIDS in Cambodia over the next five years.

Silveira recalled his own first trip to the country in 2004. “I was deeply touched. I think I identified with Cambodian culture when I arrived in Phnom Penh,” he said. “Those people have been deprived of their human rights for so long throughout history. And even with so little, they are so joyous about life.”

Working with faculty from Pannasastra University in Phnom Penh, Silveira co-taught a class of Cambodian and American students who spent the majority of the three-week course implementing “art and play” theory into action with the children at Little Sprouts and the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights (CCPCR), which provides shelter to girls under the age of 18 who have been victims of the sex trade or physical abuse. The art process was very basic: give a child a color marker or paintbrush, ask them to think about their dreams and desires, and let them express those desires through art.

“Who would have known with a little bit of paint and a lot of kids, you could create such happiness, friendship, joy and love,” said Amanda Mithers, an art education student who worked with Little Sprouts.

“Art is a universal language that reaches out across cultures, hoping for a world with no boundaries,” Silveira concluded. “When used as a tool for education, it sensitizes us, it makes us think critically, and be more compassionate and caring. That is why art is so vital in the chaotic world we live in.”

(Editor’s Note: Teresa Hagen and a group of CSULB film students and alumni are producing a documentary about Silveira’s Cambodian work. To learn more, visit www.cutlooseproductions.com.)