BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – A new joint initiative from Illinois Wesleyan University’s Action Research Center (ARC) has received a nearly $100,000 grant from the State Farm® Youth Advisory Board (YAB). The grant was announced Monday in Hansen Student Center on campus.
The Blank Canvas Program, an effort of ARC and Illinois State University’s College of Fine Arts (ISU), aims to cultivate the creativity of low-income, minority youth in Bloomington-Normal to help communicate the challenges they face in thinking about college, said co-creator of the program Deborah Halperin. “This project put the question to the very people targeted, ‘What would you do if you were in charge?’” said Halperin.
The grant is part of the $1 million the YAB is giving away this year nationally aimed toward closing the achievement gap in higher education. Over the past two years, the board has granted $12 million to service-learning projects across the United States and Canada, but this is the first to be awarded in McLean County.
Illinois Wesleyan University sophomore Karin Unruh is a member of YAB, which is comprised of only 30 students, ages 17 to 20, from across the nation. “It will be exciting and rewarding to personally experience the results this grant will have on our local community,” said Unruh, an elementary education and sociology double major from Algonquin, Ill.
Blank Canvas is the brainchild of Halperin and Dick Folse, an Illinois Wesleyan graduate who works for ISU’s College of Fine Arts. “The idea is to show the value of college and the college experience and expose young people to the arts,” he said. The grant provides four new computers with state-of-the-art design software, digital cameras and color printers to three community partners: the Jesus House, Western Avenue Community Center and UNITY Community Center.