Volunteering at Via Colori 2017

Recently, members of the DeBakey HSHP’s Interact Club volunteered at Houston’s annual Via Colori Festival.

For those unfamiliar with the event, Via Colori is an annual, two-day festival held in Downtown Houston, which raises money for a local non-profit, The Center for Hearing and Speech.

The Center for Hearing and Speech helps its patients, who varying degrees of hearing loss, learn how to speak without sign language.

Cecelia Linayao gives special recognition to the Center for Hearing and Speech. (Photo: Anat Ronen)

The most interesting part of the festival, however, is the gorgeous street art created by artists sponsored by local organizations.

From Mickey Mouse to the Astros, each artist, or group of, created pieces they felt personal connections with, and echoed the mission of the Center of Hearing and Speech.

Grace Nguyen and Cat Cavuoti Loehr explained to me their reasoning behind creating an adaptation of the iconic Rosie the Riveter Poster. They chose to paint Wonder Woman with her bicep curled, while still keeping the iconic phrase, “We Can Do It,” at the top. They believed that Wonder Woman, and the phrase, best represented the resilience of Houston. That, although we had our fair share of both ups and downs this past year, in the end, we always reminded ourselves that we could pull through.

Anat Ronen, an artist and photographer at the festival, was sponsored by Texas Children’s Hospital, and chose to depict a symbolic image of a woman holding a child. (Photo: Houston Via Colori Official)

Interact, which a school volunteer club sponsored by the international organization Rotary, had its members assisting in the family zone, where we face painted and tattooed kids, and the junior artist section, where we helped distribute chalk and paint to artists in middle and high school. 

The best part of volunteering at the festival though?

“The art. It was incredible to watch all the pieces come to life on the streets, especially since some of the artists were our age,” explains sophomore Kallie Thompson.

All of the hard work of volunteers, artists, and those who donated paid off, as Houston Via Colori recently announced that they received a total of $400,000 to donate to the Center for Hearing and Speech.