Great news, Ali and I (and artist  Rachel Barlow, above) chose the first two scholarships for the refugee children we are working with in upstate New York. Today, at Pompanuck Farm, Vermont artist Rachel Barlow came to teach the refugee kids about drawing and sketching.

We have all admired Sakler Moo’s drawings and sketches for some time, and after seeing some of his work today, Rachel enthusiastically recommended him and Mukwe Doe, another of the refugee children the retreat, as perfect artists to join the Brooklyn Library of Art’s Sketchbook Project, a wonderful idea to help new and developing and accomplished artists and sketchers share their work with one another, with everyone on the Internet, and to be posted permanently in the archives of the Brooklyn Art Library, one of the most famous art libraries in the world.

Rachel came to the Children’s Refugee Retreat at Pompanuck Farm to teach a class in drawing, she did a lot of “timed” sketchwork, where the kids had one or two minutes to draw something they heard or thought or saw. They got into it, and we found a number good candidates for the scholarship project.

She handled the class beautifully, perhaps because she has two young sons and knows their interests and attention spans.

You can see Rachel’s very beautiful work here, she is one of the most popular landscape artists in Vermont at the moment, we were lucky to have her at the retreat.

This scholarship idea is something I launched as a part of the Children’s Refugee Fund, the name of a separate bank account I opened here in Cambridge to collect the money and donations that come in for the refugee and immigrant children I am working with as a part of my Project Good, a response to the political turmoil gripping the country.

It cost $195.93 to enroll the two gifted young men in the Sketchbook Project, we will receive two sketchbooks and the ability to digitalize their work so it can be transferred onto the Internet archives of the Brooklyn Art Library, a global interactive library. These sketches will be seen all over the world.

Above, Rachel explained the project to Sakler Moo, whose work is already much noticed, and although he is quite shy and soft-spoken, he said he would love to accept this scholarship. Mukwe Doe will be the second scholarship.

I am very happy to kick off this scholarship project, the idea is to provide instruction and encouragement for the special talents, needs and gifts of these children, working hard to acclimate themselves to American life. We might seek to pay for classes in the arts, in English language skills, or computing, etc. We will follow the bliss of each young person and help them follow their passions.

The scholarship recommendations will all come from Ali (Amjad Abdullah Mohammed),  their mentor and teacher, he knows them well and loves them dearly. This is the first but not the last great reward to come from the Pompanuck Refugee Children’s Retreat, which ended today.

I will follow this scholarship, hopefully the first of many on the blog. It is a good cause, it will change lives and remind us of what it really means to be an American. I am still proud of that.

(If you wish to contribute, you can send a check to Jon Katz, Children’s Refugee Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or send a donation via Paypal Friends and  Family, ID: [email protected].

Thanks much, the Army Of Good made these two scholarships possible.