New stamps collage celebrates diversity

The latest collage from the Holocaust Stamps Project is the work of kindergarteners. The completion of “One World Community – Celebrating Our Diversity!”, coincides with the end of the 2015-2016 school year.

When kindergarten teacher Heidi Wahl Solivan decided to involve her 5-year-old students in the schoolwide Holocaust Stamps Project, based at Foxborough Regional Charter School, HSP founder Charlotte Sheer created a collage design especially for them. The children’s finished artwork serves  not only as a visual summary of their year-long study about different community helpers working together, but its message also provides a sharp contrast to the Holocaust mindset that led to the inhumane mistreatment and elimination of people deemed to be different.

With assistance from Solivan and several high school student volunteers, the boys and girls  selected, placed and glued hundreds of donated domestic and international stamps into place.

The uniform background, filled with Israeli stamps, suggests that everyone, no matter who they are or where they live, makes their home beneath the same big sky. A blue and green arc at the bottom of the picture represents the Earth, shared by the world’s diverse population.

Central to the artwork are three “people,” formed from geometric shapes, which provided a link to the children’s math work, while symbolically underscoring the importance of recognizing how individual differences make everyone special. Each figure is comprised of stamps bearing the unique faces of people from around the world.

One person holds a balloon made from “dove” and “love” stamps to represent the importance of pursuing peace in our world community. This is a theme that runs throughout each of the 18-by-24-inch pieces in the Holocaust Stamps Project’s series of 18 stamps collages. “One World Community – Celebrating Our Diversity!” is the 12th to be finished, and three more are currently in progress.

Since it began in 2009, the Holocaust Stamps Project has received more than 7.3 million cancelled postage stamps (including many from Jewish Voice readers) and continues to accept donations of stamps, in any amount and in any condition, in its mission to amass 11 million, one to honor every Holocaust victim whose life was senselessly thrown away. Stamps may be delivered or sent to HSP, Foxborough Regional Charter School, 131 Central St., Foxboro, MA 02035.

For more information, please visit the HSP website: foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project

– Submitted by the Holocaust Stamps Project