'Hello Neighbor' program comes to Baldwin elementary schools

"I hope people will not be mean to each other because of the color of their skin.” “I dream that people will stop littering.” “I hope to solve world hunger.”

These are just some of the issues on the minds of about 150 Baldwin elementary school students, who — as second-graders — were photographed for an ongoing project called “Hello Neighbor.” Launched in the spring of 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the initiative’s goal is to not only foster kindness and cultivate inclusion, but also to give young children a voice and forge connections between different age groups in the community.

“The elementary students have been given the opportunity to be part of a meaningful project, to think about their future and to say their thoughts and ideas,” said Baldwin schools Superintendent Shari Camhi.

Inspired by a similar project in Oregon, “Hello Neighbor” started at Brookside Elementary and has since been expanded to the Steele and Plaza elementary schools, with plans to bring it to the other two elementary schools in the district — Lenox and Meadow — this school year.

As part of the project, Baldwin High School advanced photography students snapped portraits of second-graders in the district. Those photos were then blown up into 2-by-3-foot weatherproof banners, with each student’s hopes and dreams printed on them. The banners have since been hung on fences outside district schools.

Baldwin — the only school system in New York State to implement the project — was recognized by the New York State School Boards Association last year for its use of “existing resources to introduce unique learning environments.”

“One of our goals is learning how to be meaningful and relevant, and one of the ways is to connect them to something bigger than ourselves,” said Camhi. “In many instances, it’s about civic responsibility.”

Art meets civics

Lucy Cain, 8, is already exercising her civic duty in her Baldwin neighborhood.

Now a third-grader at Plaza Elementary School, Lucy’s dream was that “everyone has what they need to survive.”

“Some people don’t have food and homes, and I want everyone to have that,” she told her second-grade teacher, Christine Garguilo, who interviewed her in March for the project.

As a Brownie Girl Scout, Lucy is doing what she can to stave off hunger in her community by collecting nonperishable food to donate to a local pantry, said Lucy’s mother, Emily Cain, 40. Lucy, who aspires to be president of the United States one day, also enjoys joining her family and local civic groups, along with the Scouts, to clean up neighborhood parks, said her mother, who has two children and is a freelance copywriter.

Last month, Lucy visited her banner at Plaza Elementary. Reflecting on the issue of homelessness, Lucy said that “people who don’t have homes” make her feel “kind of sad inside” and that if they read her banner, “They’ll know that someone cares about them.”

Cynthia Boodram, 36, said the art project helped her see another side of her son, Ethan, whose hope is to “help homeless people and animals by sharing my kind words and actions.”

“By him participating, it opened my eyes to what he thinks about the problems in the world,” said Boodram, a mother of two and an account manager. “When I heard about it [the project] and saw the banner, I said, ‘Oh, wow.’ I didn’t know he felt like that. We think they are only thinking about video games and not real-world problems.”

Now, the third-grader wants to find programs in the community so he can “help out and be involved by donating food and water,” his mother said.

“I want people to be aware of what’s happening in the world, to be aware of the homeless people and animals,” Ethan said. “I want people to help out by giving them food.”

Nomi Rosen, Baldwin schools’ administrator for professional development, implemented the project, which she said focused on second-graders because they study different types of communities. She said the students’ hopes and dreams have changed over the years.

“During the pandemic, their hopes and dreams were so painful because they were wishing the world would get better. They were all about health,” said Rosen. Since then, she said, they have shifted to dreams “second-graders normally have,” like being a firefighter or helping the world become more peaceful.

Inspiration for program

Oregon artist and photojournalist Julie Keefe launched the “Hello Neighbor” project in 2007 to bring her North Portland community together after gentrification created a loss of social and economic diversity.

Keefe said she taught lower-income middle-school students the basics of photography and interviewing techniques. The children then took portraits of their adult neighbors, which they printed with a quote from each person and hung across their neighborhood.

After the initial unveiling of the project, it traveled to six cities in Oregon. With the support of a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Caldera, a Portland-based arts nonprofit, it became the state’s largest collaborative public art project, Keefe said.

Outside of Oregon, about 10 school districts — primarily in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest — have implemented their own versions, she said.

“We have so many testaments of children saying that I never knew my opinion mattered, never knew that my neighbor would want to talk to me,” Keefe said. “Places using this to create connections between children and their neighbors … give children a voice where they didn’t know they could be heard. This made a very large impact and had a ripple effect in communities like Baldwin.”

Susan Zwirn, professor of fine arts education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, praised the Baldwin school district for understanding “the role of art to empower kids and to help them realize their hopes can be heard [and] recognized and are important in the broader community.”

She added, “Science and math awards receive a lot of community attention. Musical concerts are big events, but art displays are often quiet affairs. By placing these large photos outdoors, the voices of the kids are seen and heard. In the diverse atmosphere of Long Island schools, young children’s voices are often not heard. This kind of art project sets up a dialogue not only between generations but the children of different ages and the community. Dialogue is how we nurture a sense of community.”

High school photo project

Britney King, 15, was one of the high school students chosen to photograph second-graders at Plaza Elementary School earlier this year.

“They were really friendly and nice. It was fun to see them pose,” said King, who is now a junior.

Tamia Lindsay, 16, a senior at Baldwin High School who is also an advanced photography student, said she, too, relished working with the younger students.

“It felt good to talk to them and hear what they had to say and have a connection with them,” said Lindsay, a member of the school’s National Art Honor Society. “They are a lot younger than me, and I felt it was really important to leave a good impact on them, be a good role model. I was in elementary school once, and they will be like me one day.”

Patricia Drexler, an art and photography teacher at Baldwin High School, said her students benefited from working with the second-graders.

“They learned how to work collaboratively with other people on a project. They can say, ‘I did this and I made this kid happy,’ ” she said. “Photographs can bring the community together, and there’s a collaboration between high school students and elementary school students. Everyone worked together for an end result.”

Feona Elliott, 40, says she was thrilled to have her son, Micah, 8, participate in the project earlier this year because he will “feel his thoughts are valued and will be represented in the community.”

Micah’s dream was that “everyone will be nice to each other.”

Elliott said that her son, now in third grade at Plaza Elementary, frequently reflects on television newscasts or tells her stories about someone mistreating a friend at school and asks why people can’t be kind to one another.

It is important for people to know, said Micah, that “when you are mean to others, you can cause physical harm or you can hurt their feelings.”

While some of the children focused on people or animals, others voiced concern about environmental issues like pollution.

Third-grader Anna Yanantuono, 8, for example, dreams that one day “people will stop littering.”

“She’s always talking about stopping littering, ever since she was in kindergarten when they started teaching her about littering and how it affects the environment,” said Anna’s father, Craig Yanantuono, 42, a graphic designer.

Camhi said the project is a way to introduce the children to their neighbors. After “Hello Neighbor” was unveiled at Plaza Elementary in May, Camhi said she noticed a woman walking by who stopped to read the photo banners and teared up. The woman said she was a Baldwin High School graduate and was “touched by meeting the next generation of kids coming through our school,” Camhi said.

“That’s exactly the reaction we hoped for,” Camhi said. “In a simple way, it allows elders of the community to get to know our young people. We live in a world that is so fast-paced and so isolated that to get a sense of who lives in your community, who the next generation coming up is and what they think, is a way to connect the dots.”

After Lenox and Meadow elementary schools adopt the project, Camhi said the district is discussing “starting all over again” with a new generation of second-graders at Brookside Elementary School. There are also plans to leave up the existing photo banners as the youth transition from elementary to middle school, she said.

She added that they are considering expanding the project to the broader community, with advanced photography students taking portraits of seniors who live in housing in North Baldwin or those who attend a community senior center.

Said Keefe: “It’s all about getting people to acknowledge their neighbors and recognize each other. And it all starts with a simple hello.”