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Cooperative Coffees joins hands with the Art Miles Mural Project
In March, roaster-member Amavida participated in an international, 9-years-running peace project called the Art Miles Mural Project in which communities -- and children in particular -- are encouraged to create peace through art, namely through mural-painting. This year, the organization that runs the project chose the Seaside community, home to Amavida, to host the event. After a trip to Chiapas, Amavida delivered several murals produced by producer partner Maya Vinic's children. Read Dan Bailey's summary of the event below!
April 2009
by Dan Bailey, Amavida Coffee
The Art Miles Mural Project is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to creating harmony and peach through art, in addition to teaching children about cultures around the world. The project was founded by Joanne and Fouad Tawfilis shortly after orphans in Bosnia painted the first mural on a bullet-ridden bed sheet, and it has had explosive growth globally with more than 500,000 participants.
The Objective of Art Miles Mural Project is to promote peace and harmony by completing 12 themed miles by 2010 that will be exhibited during the “Exhibition of the Century” in Eqypt. In 2010 these works, will be exhibited next to the pyramids to celebrate a decade of peace. The mural themes include: Children, Environment, Indigenous, Multicultural, Women, Music, Sports, Senior, Fairy Tale, Hero, Celebrity, Peace, Unity and Healing.
This year was the 9th year of the project and the community where Amavida Coffee resides (Seaside, Florida) was chosen to be the host location. Through Amavida Coffee, Mrs. Tawfilis was introduced the efforts of Cooperative Coffees and the needs of our producer partners and CC was invited to participate in to project by creating art murals about Fair Trade communities.
Numerous CC members sponsored murals and Amavida took a young Art Miles Peace Paint Ambassador named Chloe Fugate to Chiapas on the trip hosted by Chris Teeter. During the producer visit murals from the Zapatista communities were documented and a mural was painted with the children of Maya Vinic.
The Art Miles Mural Project was celebrated from Feb. 28 through March 10 in the beach communities of Seaside, WaterColor, WaterSound, Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach through mural exhibits, community mural paintings, concerts, film screenings, yoga classes, and presentations.
As part of the event, an area was dedicated to bring light to Fair Trade communities. In this area: 6 murals were exhibited; photography of the Zapatista murals was presented; “Slurping a Cup of Fair Trade” produced by Gary Howe was shown; and the move “Black Gold” was screened. The most moving part of the venue, was a speech presented by Chloe Fugate with the background photos of the mural painting with the Maya Vinic children and the community.
In closing, I am sure we made a lot of new friends!
For additional information about Art Miles Mural Project, please have a look at the video link that produced by Slater, who is the Canadian Art Miles Peace Ambassador: http://myhero.com/joanne.
“Slurping a cup of Fair Trade Coffee” by Gary Howe http://www.glhowe.com/cupfairtrade/index2.html
Photography by Shane Carter http://www.marlaandshane.com/mexico2/
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