The Interview

Natalie (Mom) interviews Joya (daughter)

Hi Joya, please tell us about yourself and this project.

Hi, I’m Joya. 

Since I was about 4 years old I’ve been really interested in being helpful to people. And hoping to talk about the world with my family. I’ve been wanting to give to the world things like food and groceries and things like that and money too.

How did this project come about?

I was in kindergarten and our librarian said we were supposed to make a poem at school about how the coronavirus was going for us. This was my poem.

 

Coronavirus Poem from Joya

There’s never such a thing about this 

We don’t know anything about this

How did this get here?

What is this?

When did it happen?

How did it come?

What does it mean?

We can’t scurry

We can’t hurry

But we are safe

In our world

And everybody knows about this

And everybody cares about this 

And everybody likes each other

And if you love someone, it’s very hard to stay away

 

Then somehow, I don’t know how, I think I was talking to my mom about wearing masks and I said “masks can’t filter love”.

And my mom started telling everyone that line. And she said, “can you make a poster of that?” So I got to work.

 

I made a poster of masks can’t filter love.  It looked like this:

 

   

My poster was good and my parents decided that we should fix it up and share it with the world.  So then I worked on the girl in the center of the poster. Then it looked like this:

 

Then we used photoshop to make a blue background and a yellow rim and my parents surprised me by making real stickers that look like this:  

 

Whoa, so that’s a long process.  Now what will you do with the stickers?

I want to raise money for Food for Free and give the stickers to the people who give the money.

 

Wait, what is Food for Free? What makes it so special that you would want to give them money?

Food for Free is an organization that donates food to people who need it.  They do a lot of things like they give food in backpacks on the weekends for children in Cambridge, they have a farm and they give the food from the farm to a homeless shelter.  At the homeless shelter, some of the people learn how to cook and then they cook for others when they come there.  

 

Anything else you want to say to anyone reading this interview?

I thought you might want some more information. If you do you can call me. 

 

Love, JOYA