Steve English, who owns The Blossom Boys, a flower shop in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, teamed up with Katie Driscoll, a Palos Park mom and photographer, to create “Changing the Face of Beauty,” an ad campaign that uses kids with special needs to model fair trade items from the store.
In just a couple of months, the pair have photographed more than a dozen children. The photographs appear on some Facebook pages and Driscoll’s blog, 5boysand1girlmake6.com. At this point, Driscoll says their goal is to photograph 100 children by the end of the year. They also hope to get more local businesses involved and begin to impact the national media, as well.
“We cannot make disabled children invisible anymore,” English says. “It’s time for integration.”