Art for World Friendship Records

Art for World Friendship originated in 1946 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania as a local project undertaken by a few members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. It was the first organization to exchange child art on an international level. The founder, Maude Muller, was inspired by the suggestion of a speaker at an U.N.E.S.C.O. Conference (which she attended as a delegate of WILPF) that artists of the world should exchange their work as an aid to international peace and understanding. This seemed difficult to arrange between adult professional artists, but why not children? During the first year 1000 pictures from foreign countries were matched with a like number from American schools in the Philadelphia area. At the height of the project (ca.1955-60), practically every state in the union sent pictures for exchange and more than ninety nations on six continents were represented, including some from beyond the Iron Curtain. Pictures were received from the Soviet Union in 1964. More than 50,000 pictures a year passed through the Media headquarters.

Pictures were exchanged on a group basis under the supervision of a teacher or other adult leader, but each child who sent a picture received one in exchange to keep (preferably from a child his or her own age). Traveling exhibits of drawings from foreign children were assembled and rented for a small fee and shown all over the United States. Word of the project was spread abroad through international WILPF contacts, t he Voice of America, U.S.I.S. bulletins. The State Department's magazine Free World also carried stories on Art for World Friendship, as did the Peace Corps magazine Volunteer. As far as funds permitted, art supplies were sent to schools in underdeveloped countries where students needed them in order to participate in the project. In the United States, WILPF branches found the project a powerful peace education tool and a good way to introduce the work of the organization to their local communities. All of this was managed from Maude Muller's home in Media, Pennsylvania, with the help of a paid secretary for one day a week and the devoted services of half a dozen volunteers. Finances were a constant problem. The project was made a national committee of WILPF, but such committees never had large budgets. Art for World Friendship was given a part of the income from the Children's Theatre, another project of WILPF. Eventually AWF was made a project of the Jane Addams Peace Association, the tax-exempt educational arm of WILPF. Appeals were made to foundations and WILPF sponsors and friends of the project. American schools which participated were asked to pay a small fee. By 1968 Mrs. Muller was too ill to continue with this work. It was found impossible to interest another WILPF branch in taking on Art for World Friendship. Besides, by this time other organizations (including UNICEF) were carrying on international exchanges of children's art, so Art for World Friendship was dissolved.