photo by: Niamh Coomey

Warwood Middle School students Rianna Farrow, Lillian Wood, Chloe Pollard and Lily Tennant and teacher Heather Weekley have been hard at work painting the upstairs bathroom at the school.

A group of girls at Warwood Middle School approached Community in Schools Site Coordinator Heather Weekley last year with a simple request: decorate the drab bathrooms that they use every day.

“There were three or four girls that came up and approached me and said that they really wanted to do something with the restrooms,” Weekley said. “They looked very institutionalized; there weren’t any kind of hygiene items, there weren’t mirrors, there wasn’t anything. We called the project ‘Jazzing Up The Stalls’ and it just evolved from there.”

The group was able to receive a grant from the Community Foundation for the Ohio Valley that covered the expenses of the project that the school was not able to cover in-house. Now, the project is in its second year, and middle school girls are painting another bathroom.

“I absolutely love it and it really makes things a lot cheerier and we make sure they have hygiene items and we also put toothbrushes and deodorant and those kinds of things to really make them accessible,” Weekley said.

Middle schoolers Rianna Farrow, Lillian Wood, Chloe Pollard and Lily Tennant recently were hard at work in the bathroom. The girls said they had a poll where they asked for feedback on which theme to select for this second bathroom. The overwhelming response was a beach theme complete with flamingos, a turtle, tropical flowers and other creatures.

The students said they hope the project inspires future generations of middle schoolers to get creative and do something positive in their environment.

Boys at the school have been inspired by the project and also want to re-paint their bathrooms now, Weekley said.

“The whole school of the girls wanted to do the second bathroom and the boys said they wanted something done with theirs,” she said. “They’re a little jealous, which I never would have thought.”

Weekley emphasized that the support from the CFOV made the project possible.

“Without them this project wouldn’t have been able to take place and I didn’t realize how something this – I don’t want to say small – but how much it would mean to the girls in the school and encourage them to want to do more,” she said.

The program is spreading, not just to the boys of Warwood Middle School and potentially the Warwood Elementary School, but also to other schools in the area.

Weekley said when students have come to Warwood for sports games, they’ve noticed the painted bathrooms and spread the excitement to their own schools. Elm Grove Elementary School is currently working on raising money through the Parent Teacher Association to start their own painting project.

“It just really makes you feel good. I love the support from the students. Everybody hears about it, they walk by, they want to come see it and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the students,” Weekley said.