Creating Keepsakes to Help Orphaned Kids Hold On to Childhood

When he was 21, Ben Schumaker decided to spend a month volunteering in Guatemala, thinking it would make a nice break before graduate school. He certainly wasn’t looking for an idea that could fuel a new nonprofit group. But that’s exactly what began to sneak up on him one day seven years ago when a Guatemalan man, who grew up an orphan, came to visit the orphanage where Mr. Schumaker volunteered. The two talked casually as another American volunteer snapped photographs of the children. The man remarked on how he had never had any photos of himself as a kid, nor any keepsakes. He said he had a hard time remembering much at all about his childhood without parents to help him do so.

About a year after Mr. Schumaker, 28, returned to his home state of Wisconsin, he was struck by a way to help. He contacted orphanages overseas, asking them to take photographs of the orphans in their care and send the images to the United States. Then he sent e-mails to high-school art teachers in the state to see if they were interested in developing class art projects around creating portraits from the photographs that could become visual keepsakes for the orphans. Fifteen teachers signed up.

Since that time, Mr. Schumaker’s Memory Project has delivered 25,000 portraits to children in 31 countries. About 1,000 schools have participated.

The project—run by a Sun Prairie, Wis., nonprofit called My Class Cares, which Mr. Schumaker started with his wife, Abha Thakkar—relies solely on money provided by the schools. The high schools contribute $15 per student, money often raised through bake sales or from local businesses.

Last year, the group received $130,000. Along with the Memory Project, the charity runs a smaller effort to bring school lesson plans to Uganda. About $60,000 went to pay for salaries for Mr. Schumaker and his wife, the two employees, and the rest paid for travel and other expenses.

Mr. Schumaker started out by sending the portraits to orphanages in the mail. But he soon realized that high-school students in the United States got a lot more from the program when they could see photographs of the children receiving and enjoying them. So now he or someone else hand delivers the portraits and sends photos and reports back to the American schools.

“It really made a difference for everyone to see the end result,” he says.

When kids receive their portraits, some are giddy and can’t wait to show them off. Others clutch them close and laugh. Older children, in particular, may have little visible reaction, says Mr. Schumaker, but sometimes he’ll catch them admiring the portraits later.

Once in a while, he has the heartbreaking experience of delivering a portrait for a child who has died. The friends of a Guatemalan girl who died of leukemia hung her portrait in their room.

Mr. Schumaker often hears from U.S. students who have participated in the program. Sometimes the students and their families express interest in adopting the children in their portraits; in some cases, he has referred them to an adoption agency.

A few years ago, Mr. Schumaker almost handed over the project to a larger charity that was interested in taking it on. But, he says, he realized he didn’t want to give it up: “It’s more than a job at this point.”