BEYE Discovery: Bird Sculptures & Donation to Audubon

Post Contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director/Educator

On Oct. 4th, we read "Olivia's Birds" by child author and artist Olivia Bouler. Olivia, age 11, was moved to action when she heard about the birds of the Gulf Coast, victims of the 2010 BP oil spill. Her first efforts were devoted to people who made monetary donations to the National Audubon Society to help save the birds: for every donation, Olivia painted a specific bird species to give to the donor as a thank you. Olivia created over 500 paintings and a number of these were included in her book Olivia's Birds.

Our students were deeply moved by Olivia's work to help save the birds. We decided that we could do something as well: using recycle materials such as plastic bottles, food packaging, broken toys and other “discarded” material, the students created bird sculptures that they auctioned on October 13th at Beye School's 1st Annual Fall Harvest Festival. You can see the students' sculptures in the photos below, taken at the auction. A big thank you to our students, Beye families and teachers who raised $135 dollars for the National Audubon Society's conservation efforts, through the sale of these amazing found-object bird sculptures! Beye Discovery students also raised an additional $200 for the Beye PTO, through the auction of their framed endangered species illustrations. Kudos!