Maldives Traveller:.Anantara launches art aid for orphaned children
BY MALDIVES TRAVELLER STAFF
17 NOVEMBER 2010
Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas have successfully launched an aid programme to help orphaned and underprivileged Maldivian children by offering a series of inspiring art workshops.
The company’s Dhigu resort, which is situated around 19km from Malé International Airport in South Malé Atoll, last week celebrated its first art aid project with Anantara’s international artist-in-residence, Christopher Hogan.
The programme offered a dozen orphaned and adopted local children the possibility to explore, and enjoy, the craft of brush painting under Hogan’s intuitive and infectious tutoring. The children’s colourful artwork was then auctioned off to guests at the resort during a special cocktail reception on the beach later that evening. The total proceeds of the auction reached an impressive US$1,561, with one painting of a red angelfish reaching US$220 alone. A handful of other paintings from the children also topped the US$150 mark.
Claudia Pronk, general manager of three of Anantara’s resort and spa properties in the Maldives, told Maldives Traveller that she was “thrilled and excited that the focus of this special day would be on these special children.”
The aid programme is part of the company’s corporate social responsibility ethos to enhance the lives of underprivileged children in the Maldives by raising money for immunizations, eye tests, dental care, schooling, stationary, clothes, school bags and other essential resources.
A senior executive spokesperson for the Children’s Home of Villingili, where some 52 children are currently cared for, told Maldives Traveller that while the Maldives government helps subsidize the needs of their orphaned and underprivileged children with a respectable annual budget, donations and funds from the private sector are always welcomed, and often desperately needed.
“We have 11 sponsored staff and 26 governmental staff working in shifts around the clock for the children’s home, but a lot of our children are little babies who need 24-hour care and supervision, so funding and volunteering are always in constant need,” said the spokesperson.
The spokesperson went on to say that the care home is currently taking care of 12 newborn babies.
Bernard Columba, director of human resources at Anantara resorts Maldives, and the mastermind behind the art aid project, told Maldives Traveller that his plan was to achieve “an ongoing programme to help local children throughout the year.”
Said Columba: “We’re not really interested in just inviting the children’s home over for lunch or leisure activities once a month. What we really want to do is have an ongoing programme, in several stages, where we can teach children basic skills such as the arts and crafts, and then check up on them regularly throughout the year. We want to be part of a constructive process in the community.”
Artist and sculptor Christopher Hogan, who conducted the first art workshop programme for a dozen children, said an early desire to paint or draw could help teach the children to “explore a career in the creative arts when they come of age.” Each child was given a special ‘art pack’ after the workshop event, which consisted of paints, brushes, art books and other materials.
The second stage of the programme, which will include another dozen children from the Villingili home, will commence at Anantara Dhigu Resort & Spa in the near future.
