After graduating from The King’s Academy (West Palm Beach, FL) in 2005, Rachel Rossin has been working to make changes in the world. The Florida State senior’s method of choice? Art.
Supported by an Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Award from the Office of National Fellows, Rossin traveled during the summer of 2008 to Uganda to launch the Greenhouse Project, the non-profit advocacy organization she created to benefit an orphanage located just outside the country’s capital city.
The Greenhouse Orphanage is home to some 60 children, ages 15 months to 13 years old, whose lives have been ravaged by almost two decades of civil war, the AIDS pandemic and poverty. Rossin’s ultimate goal with the Greenhouse Project is to help the orphanage become self-sustainable. Her work involves teaching art to the children as a means of expression, and their drawings, paintings, videos and photographs are used to raise awareness of their plight and garner donations to support the orphanage.
This extraordinary humanitarian effort would not have become reality without the grant from Florida State, says 21-year-old Rossin. “This award allowed me to pursue my project … and to incorporate photography and the filming of a small documentary in order to serve as a voice for the children that I worked with.”
Rossin, a graphic design student with an art history minor, spent her childhood in West Palm Beach, where she graduated from The King’s Academy. Her father earned a law degree from Florida State in 1983, and her mother majored in interior design and graduated from the university in 1978. Rossin, who also studied abroad through Florida State’s course offerings in Italy, will complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May.
After graduation, Rossin says she plans to join AmeriCorps or Teach for America before going on to graduate school to study either art therapy or law. In addition, “I plan on continuing my work with The Greenhouse Project and being an advocate for human rights,” she says. “I will always use art and design as a method to further social justice and to provide a better standard of living for individuals,” asserts Rachel Alex Rossin.
The King’s Academy is a nationally recognized private Christian school serving approximately 1,200 students from preschool through twelfth grade and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the Association of Christian Schools International, and the Florida Association of Christian Schools. The King’s Academy serves students and their families across Palm Beach County at its main campus at Belvedere Road and Sansbury Way in West Palm Beach and its satellite preschool campuses in Greenacres, Palm Beach Gardens, and Royal Palm Beach.
8401 Belvedere Rd.
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