Painting at home raises funds
aside from a trial run with three of her friends, Averil Smith had never led a step-by-step social painting event before, let alone while balancing on a dilapidated sofa. With the saggy, dust-covered couch as her podium, she had to shout above the 30 chattering women squeezed into a camp cabin basement. The result was 30 successful forest paintings and a lot of fun.
That women’s retreat painting event gave Smith confidence to start a creative way to fundraise for local and international needs. In February 2017 she launched the Paint FAIR Project by hosting painting parties around her dining room table, charging $30 per person. Since then she’s led step-by-step painting at events ranging from birthdays to bachelorette parties. All proceeds go to charities, aside from $5 to cover the paint supplies (www. Facebook.com/paintFAIRproject).
Smith came up with the idea to fundraise through social painting at a Fellowship National conference she attended with her husband Mark, a Sudbury pastor. There she heard a talk by Fellowship Aid and International Relief (FAIR) and was confronted by the problem of child sexual exploitation in the Philippines.
“The ages were babies. The parents were desperate for money and they would go to these video camera locations. I won’t describe any more, but it was just awful,” she recalls. She thought of her children safe at home. “What if that was me, or that was my kid?”
To date, the Paint FAIR Project has raised $10,000. The funds have primarily gone to FAIR, but have also supported community needs such as a local choir and pregnancy centre. Smith knowsPub each contribution is small, but she is encouraged by incremental progress around the world.
FAIR surpassed their original goal of $120,000 to help exploited children in the Philippines. There are now on-site social workers providing trauma care and rehabilitation for rescued children.
“It can be overwhelming to think how big the problems are,” Smith says. “That’s why I clung to the idea that it’s not just me.”
While the pandemic has temporarily halted Smith’s events, she’s eager to use the momentum caused by social deprivation to increase fundraising once restrictions start easing. After that, her goal is to continue supporting charities and encouraging others to offer their abilities for the greater good.
“It’s not thinking too highly of yourself and getting discouraged, but also not thinking too lowly of yourself and thinking you can’t do anything.”