 At their annual auction in November, Painting for a Purpose sells painted furniture and the proceeds are used to support students in Portland Public Schools. Tom taught with co-founder Tina Clark Edwards about the organization's work. Tina, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Tom. Glad to be here. Painting for a Purpose has a big auction coming up, but before we get into that, can you just describe briefly what Painting for a Purpose is all about? Painting for a Purpose is a group of people who really care about education in Portland and also really like to paint. So we started in 2009, a group of, there's really women, but we've expanded a little bit, who meet weekly to paint sort of whimsical furniture and then we have an auction in November 8th and we sell all that furniture and then that money goes into a grant fund for kids in the Portland Public Schools to write grants to us about how they're going to make a difference. So we call that Youth-Led Service Learning Grants. And how did the idea come about to create an organization like this and actually have kids solve their own problems in the schools? Part of it came about because the two of us who founded it, Jane Ellis and myself, both had been involved in youth grant making and were really excited by sort of the power that we saw when kids were given money for their ideas and just the excitement and the sort of creativity. And so we also discovered that we had this mutual love of painting and we were walking on the beach one day and said, I had also been a part of a painting group that I had gotten acquainted with in Cape Cod and I said, I really want to do a painting group in Portland. And so we were talking about that and we said, we want our painting to be for a purpose. We really love doing fanciful furniture and painting, but we wanted to go for something else and then we just sort of looked at each other and it was like, hey, it's a painting for a purpose. And so we wanted it to be for this youth led service learning. Now you have some amazing stories about some of the problems children have come up with and their solutions. Can you talk about those? Yeah. I mean, when I say youth led service learning, that really is where students, young people in Portland identify issues or problems that are important to them and they have to research them just like an adult would and they have to document that so it might be through interviews, surveys, things like that. And then once they understand the issue, then they come up with a solution. And then they are then responsible for writing a grant to us and making their case. So some of the projects that we funded, last year we funded at Presumskit School, the fifth grade had done a survey of wanting to know what were sort of the issues in the school and what was identified as a top issue was that the cafeteria was a stressful place for students and that oftentimes teachers would take kids back to their classrooms to eat for lunch rather than be at the cafeteria. So one particular young woman wrote a grant about creating an outdoor space where a teacher could take a classroom of kids at lunchtime. So they have a boulder garden now, which is a safe, calm space for kids to eat lunch. Another one is at Lyman Moore School, they decided that their school was unwelcoming. So there was a club of students that decided that they wanted to create a mural and so they worked with an artist. So we funded the artist to come in and the beautiful mural there now. We funded two places at Lyseth and at Casco Bay High School. They identified that they wanted healthier choices for eating, so they both created school gardens. They also wanted to show students where their food came from. So those, that's- What a great, what a great opportunity for learning about the community, about being involved about their own empowerment. Now just, I'm sure people would be motivated to support something like this. Can you talk a little bit about the auction? We have some examples right here. I can talk about the auction. Yes, this year we've changed it up a little bit and we decided we wanted a little bit more of a theme. So one of our members designed lobster boats and so, and then another member and her husband cut them out. So these are made with love and then we had, we asked local artists to actually partner with some young people from Portland Public Schools art classes to paint boats. So these, some of these are a collaboration between students and adult artists and others are just artists, but they're all going to be sold at our November 8th auction at Grace Restaurant. There are other items also for our children? There are other items. These students also painted dories. Oh wow. And so they're, so some of them go along together and then group of us who meet weekly the core painting for a purpose group and others have painted all sorts of fanciful furniture. So that'll be in the silent auction. Great. What would be the starting bid for something like this? $10,000. Good. Well, I'm sure somebody will bid that. People want more information. Where can they go? I'll then go on our website paintingforapurpose.net, go on Facebook or give me a call at 865-3642. Yeah, we definitely would like to have people there. Great. Well, thank you for joining us. Keep your eye out for the boats and dories which will be on display throughout the city during the month of October.