Paul Peters, a staff member from Mennonite Collegiate Institute, recently started a community project called "Hope is found here."

 The idea is that people would send in ideas of what brings them hope which he would then add onto a wooden art piece he painted a rainbow on.

 "It was a lot of fun to do. I was pretty shocked at the amount of response. Initially, I figured I'd get anywhere from 15 to 20 [responses], would have loved to get a little more," says Peters.

To his surprise, there were over 50 people that responded from ten different countries.

"It was just really neat to see where I was getting responses from and what people had to say, and just as a reminder to how important togetherness is."

Peters used his son's hands and feet to make prints on the boards.

Peters says he is part of a Facebook group with people from all over the world and shared it there, which is where he received a number of responses from. Seeing that feedback gave a sense of where the global community is finding hope while being able to share that with his community in the Pembina Valley.

"It started as something I wanted to do in my own backyard on a fence with people walking by, but again, with the reality of our times, it couldn't be that. I had to get creative. How was I going to actually make this a community piece so that it'™s not just a rainbow on a piece of wood?"

He was also excited to hear back from a lot of people that he hadn't heard from in years that are from the area.

"It totally blew my mind in how people were actually willing to get engaged in it . . . I felt genuinely connected to people through social media which for the last eight months, I've been exploring how not to use social media. It felt very weird and almost against what I believe in."

Overall, Peters says the project taught him that connecting with other people is so important at all times, and having the work hangs in his house will act as a small reminder of that.

The names of all the people who submitted ideas to the project.