Kites From Plastic Waste
Without any experience in creating such a project, nor in working with children, my I Believe we can Fly project ended up such as a human and lifetime experience.
Julien Thomas
In 2014, Julien started his “I Believe we can Fly” project (IBF). A 7-courses project aiming to teach schoolchildren from NGO schools in Vietnam and Cambodia, how to upcycle plastic waste/bags into children’s kites.
Some fun-filled & ecological courses free of charges; a project involving fun, ecology and a bit of poetry.
The courses involved Julien only on the ground (no team was planned for his project): just Julien, the staff of the NGO schools, and sometimes a few volunteers.
Have you seen this flow of happiness on the photo above? This was the whole purpose of his IBF project!
For main info, visit his upcycle courses for children page.
Why IBF Project?
It’s a long story and related to Julien’s previous experiences on the Southeast Asia continent.
Simply said: this is just One Story of a former badass traveler who had crazy ideas many, many times!
Teaching Asian children how to create kites from plastic waste was a perfect combination: the kite is part of the culture of the project participants, and discarded plastic bags can be found everywhere in these countries.
IBF Preps
Back Home
To build his project, Julien decided to get back home/France and worked on it for one year.
8 years before this period, he had just left France (he was 21) and never went back home for that long!
Few people/friends helped him to create his project presentation and other things. These people knows that Julien will always be very grateful to them.
Funding
• A grant by Projets Jeunes, CDIJ Mission Locale.
• Julien’s jobs. Also the sale of his photojournalism photos during many exhibitions he organized in cinema halls, bars & restaurants and music festivals.
• A crowdfunding campaign – here.
In order to “thanks” the donors, Julien offered to write the names of the donors on the created kites, taking a photo of it and sent it to the donors as postcards.
Partnerships
His project had two partnerships.
• Image Photo: a photo shop which provided some photo equipment.
• Adronaline (no link, shop is closed): which provided a custom drone. The main goal of the project was to fly kites, so having a drone was quiet appropriated for Julien!
Booklet
A booklet of drawings was created to picture the project for its funding purposes.
Click/tab the image view PDF booklet.
the courses
The project was planned in organizing 7 courses with NGO schools carrying for underprivileged schoolchildren.
Note: for the last/7th course (NGO Pour un Sourire d’Enfant), the participating children were actually too young to learn the kite-making process. So Julien decided to change his project kids craft from kites to flowers.
Vinh Son - Les Filles de La Charité
Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City / 2014, October / 7 kites made / 5 participating children
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Maison Chance
Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City / 2014, October / 22 kites made / 14 participating children
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Enfants d'Asie
Cambodia – Saen Monourom / 2014, December / about 20 kites made / about 25 participating children
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Help The Cambodian Children
Cambodia – Sihanoukville / 2015, January / about 20 kites made / about 20 participating children
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Via Del Campo
Cambodia – Sihanoukville / 2015, January / about 15 kites made / about 10 participating children
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Painting Smiles School
Cambodia – Otres Village / 2015, March / about 20 kites made / about 20 participating children
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Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE)
Cambodia – Sihanoukville / 2015, May / about 30.. flowers made / 13 participating children
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Photo Gallery
Large smiles & artistic creations can be generated when children upcycle plastic waste into kids crafts!
“DIY Flowers” tab, refers to the crafts created during the last course of his official IBF project – read above.
Videos
Julien also made short videos during his IBF project/courses!
The first video (25min) summarizes his project’s 7 courses.
Playlist
25:20
0:26
6:11
0:26
10:28
1:14
1:30
14:10
15:06
1:14
4:54
9:19
Julien's Notes
This time/new advanture will forever be part of the best times of my life.
Anyway, and as Winston Churchill said “we make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give”.
– Some people may say: your project didn’t brought anything new, playing with kites is part of the culture of the participants…
– My answer: is this kite culture focuses on using clean plastic bags? Or unnecessary plastic bags automatically thrown to the ground by the majority of the citizen – which is also part of the culture/habits of these countries? Also, these kid’s kites you are referring to, are they small (one plastic bag), or large and colorful (many plastic bags) like the ones in my project?…
No plastic no kites.
During a course, a participating child came to tell me few times “no plastic no kites”. These words coming from a participating and underprivileged child, stroke my mind. I found them relevant and in complete ad-equation with my project, and the school director agreed to have a drawing on the school wall.
“I Believe We Can Fly” project.. I’m really happy with the words that came to mind!
Kids' Flowers courses
After the unexpected flowers-making course (with NGO Pour un Sourire d’Enfant – read above), Julien decided to develop his passion of upcycling plastic waste with children with DIY children’s flowers.