We wanted to offer a glimpse into the hearts and minds of those amazing people who offer their advice, support, and direction as Board Members for Hope-4-Kids. Our first very special Board Member is Ms. Anita Mays. If you follow Hope-4-Kids, you know Anita was recently our Sponsor for our Summer Fundraising Event. Not only does she sit on the Board of Hope-4-Kids, but she also runs a very successful business Eighty-Eight Lines, and has implemented art programs in local schools, and painted beautiful murals in local schools.
At Hope-4-Kids, every member who joins our Board of Directors has a special love for kids and for families. They all put their hearts and soul into their efforts. Anita Mays is connected to kids like no other person I know.
Her deep commitment to kids and to injecting beauty and art into their lives through various avenues never wanes. Since the age of 5 Anita has loved art. Throughout her life, she strived to perfect her art and her career goals.
After a brief hiatus during her college years, she finally found the one thing again that gave her more satisfaction and more peace than anything else. Her art. Her confidence back, she realized that art was always her first love and she was ready to carry through with her dreams. With a Business Major behind her, Anita reinvented her art goals.
Her dream has flourished into
Eighty8 Lines. A Business that hosts fun and exciting paint parties. Anita’s goal was to help people learn to face their fears and create something beautiful out of the things they were so afraid to face. Through the fun of parties, Anita reached people with their own art pieces.
Guests profess both shock and excitement when they produce art that is reflective of their personalities and feelings. Her comforting and reassuring personality puts guests at ease so they can relax and truly focus on just painting for a short time.
As if having your own business and being a philanthropist at heart wasn’t already a full time job, Anita wanted to do more. Not only does she work at her paint parties with her business 88L, she created a program for youth called “SCriBbles”. Using different art & S.T.E.A.M activities, that children love, she creates a lifetime appreciation and love for art and promotes self-confidence.
If all of that were not enough, Anita felt she needed to do something else. Her new program called “Imprints” was specifically designed to help young artists get the support and resources they needed to build on their desire to be artists. Her heartfelt desire is to offer kids opportunities she never had as a child herself. Not only providing supplies and tools, but also creating partnerships with other artists to offer support to each other.
With everything else Anita has achieved in her life, she found the time to take on yet one more huge project. Under her direction, along with staff and students who volunteered their time on a Saturday morning, a beautiful mural was born at Sunrise Elementary. Thanks to a Lowe’s Toolkit for Education grant, staff and students of Sunrise McMillan Elementary paint a bright and cheerful mural where the 2 main halls of the school meet. The mural says “Soar into Greatness,” and that is exactly what we hope it will inspire our students to do.
Her association with Hope-4-Kids has proven to be a wonderful collaboration of talent, insight and ideas that prove why teamwork makes such a difference. Dedicated to excellence and to do everything possible to give kids a better chance at life. We love Anita at Hope-4-Kids and know that our future is bright with her being a part of it.
Her Favorite Quote: “Whether I pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, everything I do begins as a line that soon connects with other lines to create a masterpiece”- Artist Anita Mays
