The Alexander Galt High School Arts Concentration Program will be holding its third annual art exhibit and auction this year on Tuesday, February 21, at the Lennoxville United Church. Breaking with the pattern established in its first two years of donating the proceeds to the Bishop’s and Champlain refugee student sponsorship program, this year the students have decided to paint for the benefit of The Pet Connection.
Sigal Hirshfeld, the teacher who oversees the program, explained that this year’s change in benefactor was the idea of student Audrey-Anne Deslauriers. Although the art teacher had not necessarily been looking to shift the focus of the project, she said that the amount of work done by Deslauriers to advocate for the work being done by Lennoxville’s Jen Young really demanded recognition.
“She really did the research, prepared a powerpoint, presented it to the class and persuded the students that this is what we should go for this year,” Hirshfeld said. “The Students had a much more immediate connection with the topic. They all have pets; they all understand the bond that humans and pets have and connected well to that cause.”
Deslauriers shared that it was her family’s own experience of adopting a cat from the pet connection, as well as the work done by Young to help nurse a dying cat back to health that inspired her to speak up for the Pet Connection.
Read the full story in The Record on February 8
