Soaring To New Heights: Wing It Project Empowers Children

Anastasia Gavalas has yet to meet a child who doesn’t want to make a pair of wings.

Her streak only continued on Friday morning while working with over 120 children aged 4 to 13 in the Southampton High School peace garden, as part of Southampton Youth Association’s summer programing.

There, she pointed them toward a variety of vibrant, scalloped fabrics — both solid colors and patterns — and showed them how to glue them into triangles the size of their torsos, securing them in place with ribbons.

“Okay, your wings are on!” Ms. Gavalas told them, one by one, watching as their eyes lit up — sparkling with a sense of freedom, confidence and agency.

Then, like clockwork, they throw out their arms, their wings spreading across their backs — and they run.

“There’s the symbolism of letting children soar and letting them fly and recognizing their own strength and independence, regardless of their circumstances,” Ms. Gavalas said. “Wings are so symbolic. You have to give children roots, but you also have to let them discover their wings.”

This is the Wing It Project, explained its founder and “chief wing giver,” a grassroots nonprofit that she started in 2013 to help empower children by allowing them to design, create and embrace their wings — and, in turn, let their strength shine.

“This year has been such a difficult year for children. They need it more than ever,” Ms. Gavalas said. “They need to know that no matter what the world throws at them, they can overcome. No matter what their circumstances are, they can go on. They have power within them. There isn’t a child out there who can’t benefit from discovering their wings.”

Ms. Gavalas, who is an education specialist, member of the Southampton Union Free School District school board, and a mother of five, primarily works with children from pre-K through sixth grade of all abilities — artistic and otherwise — as well as varied socio-economic backgrounds.

To date, hundreds of children have made a pair of wings in public and private schools, after-school programs, pediatric hospitals, domestic violence shelters and youth organizations, both domestically and abroad, Ms. Gavalas said.

“Every time I see them putting on their wings, that’s what keeps me going,” she said. “It’s like an infinite possibility of what they can do. Everything that they ever believed they could do before someone told them they couldn’t do, that’s what I see in their eyes. And that’s what’s so magical about it. It really is empowering.”

During one workshop, a young girl named Jessica arrived in her wheelchair to make her wings. When she was done glueing her fabric — the majority is donated to the project, Ms. Gavalas said — she pushed herself away from the table with the hand she was able to move and tried to get up, in an attempt to toss the wings over her shoulder.

And when she was wheeled outside for an activity with her peers, she did stand and participate, which she had never done before.

“It was magical,” Ms. Gavalas said. “It’s something I’ve never experienced. I couldn’t believe what I was watching, it was so powerful.”

The impact of the project is both immediate and long-term, she explained, recalling a student named Eddy who made his wings in the second year of the program. Years later, she bumped into him and he whispered to her that while he doesn’t wear his wings outside anymore, he still sleeps with them every night.

“It just blows my mind, I would never think that a one-time project could have such an impact,” she said. “They are their wings that represent their spirits, and they build their own wings and they go their own paths.”

In November, Ms. Gavalas plans to launch Wing It Global, starting in South Africa with extended programming that will support orphans in Egypt and refugee children in Greece. The wing kits, which are available for individual purchase, have also traveled to Nicaragua, Aruba, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Canada, and both the east and west coasts of the United States — bringing with them the ingredients for resiliency, independence and hope.

“I’m really proud of it,” Ms. Gavalas said. “As an educator, what is an experience that understands and honors the individual child, celebrates their diversity and also gives them the confidence and empowers them to be who they hope to be, or who they want to be — and this does that.”

For more information, visit wingitproject.org.