Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Las Vegas teen starts nonprofit group for art supplies

Salomee Levy

Camalot Todd

Salomee Levy, 16, speaks about the importance of donating art supplies to classrooms through the nonprofit group she founded, on Sept. 19, 2018. The organization, Artsy Hands, collects and distributes art supplies to school across the Las Vegas Valley.

Salomee Levy loses herself the moment she picks up a paintbrush. The 16-year-old is not interested in her phone and not occupied by social media.

Rather, it’s the canvas and smell of wet paint that calms her mind.

“When you’re painting, you just focus on the painting — you get lost to it, you spend quality time with yourself and your environment,” Levy said. “I’ve faced a couple of mental health issues before and I feel like it’s easy to cope and kind of get lost from reality.”

Levy, a Las Vegas native, founded the nonprofit Artsy Hands two years ago to help maintain art supplies in classrooms across the area. When Levy learned that her school's art teacher often had to purchase supplies for the classroom, the teenager got to work on a solution.

“We just started collecting supplies from different people — paint brushes, pens, oil pastels, different things like that that would really benefit students, our education,” Levy said.

The group also has an outreach program “I Stand For Me,” which produces informational pamphlets on mental health issues such as suicide, sexual assault and addiction.

The pamphlets, created by teens for teens, encourage young people to talk openly with their peers about mental health, which can often be more effective than with adults.

“We wanted to see how we can help teens, especially helping teens from teens,” Levy said. “Some teens don’t feel comfortable sharing their experience with an adult, so we formed a mental health support group where we have youth lead conversations because they can come out to us about it and they seek help from us.”

For some, Levy says the arts are a coping method in dealing with mental health issues.

Levy, who attends Coral Academy, is one of 24 teen advisers to the United Nations’ Girl Up program, allowing her to connect with ambassadors in different countries. Girl Up “supports U.N. programs promoting the health, safety, education and leadership of girls in developing countries.”

Levy went to the Girl Up conference in New York City in February with hopes to expand Artsy Hands to Mexico and Nigeria.

Since its inception, Artsy Hands has collected approximately 5,000 pens, paintbrushes and paint. The “I Stand For Me” outreach has produced 3,000 packets.