{"id":131367,"date":"2022-12-09T14:34:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T19:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=131367"},"modified":"2022-12-09T14:40:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T19:40:09","slug":"gananoque-artist-and-storyteller-honoured-with-a-peace-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/gananoque-artist-and-storyteller-honoured-with-a-peace-medal\/","title":{"rendered":"Gananoque Artist and Storyteller honoured with a peace medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The YMCA of Eastern Ontario recognized two local peacemakers at the 2023 Peace Medal Award Presentations at the Brockville YMCA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heather Haynes<\/a>, an international artist living in Gananoque, founder of non-profit organization The Art of Courage<\/a> received the medal for Kingston. Through storytelling the Art of Courage raises awareness and funds to support vulnerable women and children in the Democratic Republic of The Congo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy art lead me there, I\u2019ve always had my art as being connected to charity in some way\u2026which led me to go abroad to Uganda in 2008. It was the people that really affected me\u2026I ended up going to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011 after I read a book by Lisa Shannon called <\/span>A Thousand Sisters<\/span><\/i>, it was the stories of the women and I felt as though I wanted to meet the women and create paintings of them so I can tell their story\u2026to raise awareness of what\u2019s going on there,\u201d says Haynes.<\/span><\/p>\n

She says she felt a responsibility to do something.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTheir stories were horrific, they\u2019re impossible stories to reconcile in your heart or your mind\u2026I just started painting and I found opportunities to show my work and tell people and they\u2019d feel it from the paintings\u2026I\u2019d raise funds through the sales of paintings, events, fundraisers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Haynes adds a meeting led her to raising funds to house orphans.<\/span><\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/HEATHER-CLIP.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

This experience led her to paint 80 orphaned children who were in this home, she called it <\/span>The Wall of Courage.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI started touring it to raise funds to build a school to educate all those children and more children in the community\u2026My responsibility is to be honest with where I\u2019m coming from, it\u2019s a human connection. If people are suffering I believe we need to do something to stop them from suffering,\u201d says Haynes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Art of Courage started in 2018 and educates 400 children and is run by 23 staff. Haynes says we\u2019re challenged to raise the funds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the U.S.-Canadian dollar, food prices have doubled\u2026the funds are about $40,000 more than we walked into four years ago\u2026Businesses can donate\u2026pay a teacher\u2019s salary for a year, or buying school supplies\u2026it\u2019s community here, supporting community there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Peace week is an annual event, where YMCA\u2019s across Canada celebrate acts of peace and recognize individuals or group who have demonstrated a commitment to building peace in their community or in communities around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a gut instinct to do something, follow it, don\u2019t let your mind tell you it\u2019s impossible, you don\u2019t know until you try\u2026If I didn\u2019t make that one small step, none of this would\u2019ve happened. I don\u2019t have this huge network, I\u2019m not a wealthy person by any means, I\u2019m an artist\u2026The intention is good, I think if we follow those impulses when they\u2019re out of love, I think we\u2019ll learn a lot and it will always lead us somewhere better\u2026.when you\u2019re kind to someone, they\u2019re kind to someone, that\u2019s the kind of energy we want instead of fear and impossibility, there\u2019s possibilities we just don\u2019t see them enough on the news,\u201d says Haynes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mezaun Hodge, Co-founder of Diversity Advisory Coalition was the medal winner for the Brockville area.<\/span><\/p>\n

Listen to the full CFRC interview with Heather Haynes below:<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The YMCA of Eastern Ontario recognized two local peacemakers at the 2023 Peace Medal Award Presentations at the Brockville YMCA. Heather Haynes, an international artist living in Gananoque, founder of non-profit organization The Art of Courage received the medal for Kingston. Through storytelling the Art of Courage raises awareness and funds to support vulnerable women…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":131369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,219,3265],"tags":[21631,21633,21632,21630,21629,15463],"radio":[13056],"origine":[267,13051,269],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131385,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131367\/revisions\/131385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131367"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=131367"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=131367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}