He showed up, and kept showing up
Aidan started Palettes for Possibilities after volunteering at a local assisted living facility and noticing that residents who had once been artists, teachers, and creative people had largely stopped making things. Not because they couldn't — but because no one was making space for it anymore.
So he made space. He sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper next to a resident who hadn't drawn in decades, and just asked her to try. What she made was genuinely beautiful. The look on her face when she saw it was enough to build an entire program around.
He kept coming back. He wrote lesson plans, recruited other students, reached out to more facilities, and eventually built a program that now runs in four cities across the country — all while still in high school.
