Today I worked with a group of Operation Sock Monkey craftivists to create hummingbirds for a very special cause.  Over 5 hours, we created 40 little ‪hummingbirds‬ for the Liz Elliot Memorial Ceremony and Potlatch happening on September 11, 2015 ‪at the SFU Centre for ‪Restorative Justice.

SFU criminologist Liz Elliott, who was a champion of restorative justice, is honored during the raising of a totem totem created by inmates at Ferndale Correctional Institution in Mission. It now stands in the School of Criminology. – source

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The hummingbirds created today are gifts for the special ceremony in September.

Huge thank you to Laura and Spruce Harbour Marina for hosting and to my sweet craftivists: Lenore, Lynn, William, Brenda, Laura!

A special thank you to Operation Sock Monkey founder, Lindsey Hodgson, for supporting this project as well as our 200 Sock Monkeys for Nepal Project.

 

It took me awhile to work out the design but in the end, I chose gloves as opposed to socks and I am really happy with the outcome!

 

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We all had a fabulous time creating them!

Craftivism = healing!

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The hummingbird has a deep significance to Liz Elliot, to restorative justice and to all of us today.

You may recall that I spent a beautiful morning with Brenda Morrison and her students teaching a 4th year Criminology class with Laura Mack at SFU on February 23, 2015.

The lovely egg above was a gift from Brenda- made by “lifer” at Ferndale Institute.  It features a hummingbird with the word “spirit.”

In October 2014, Brenda gave me a beautiful book from another SFU class: The Flight of the Hummingbird. The theme of the book is the power of taking small steps to achieve a big goal:

“I am doing what I can.” – Dukdukdiya