Today we’d like to introduce you to Thaovy Nguyen.
Hi Thaovy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m Thaovy Nguyen, the founder and current president of the Project Color Foundation. I’m currently studying ATEC (Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications) with a concentration in design and production at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Project Color Foundation is a student-run unincorporated nonprofit association founded by a group of students in April of 2018 from Mansfield Lake Ridge High School. I started the organization along with several cofounders by my side: Lily Tran, vice president, as well as Luisa Dalton, the treasurer. Other notable people who worked to start the organization with us are Toba Awoniyi and Abigail Popple.
The Project Color Foundation’s mission is that “we provide children of all backgrounds with the opportunity to explore their creativity through the arts.” Currently, we are primarily focused on serving underprivileged communities by donating art supplies and goods to Title 1 schools in DFW. We are volunteer-driven, therefore, 100% of donated goods, resources, and funds goes directly towards the services that we provide.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
When you try to start a charitable organization at the age of 16 along with other 16/17-year-olds, challenges is going to be a given. However, we always got through the issues and did our best to resolve them. Some of the struggles dealt with us being stagnant with our growth and not knowing how to overcome it for a while, especially during the pandemic. We had to cancel all of our plans for future events which left us in a rut for quite some time. Because our board is spread out in three different cities across two states, it has been hard to efficiently plan for events at one location. The officers being in different cities have never been a large issue to work through internal problems within the organization though. With our recent project. Gift & Dash, our social media director, Kayla Moore, worked on our Instagram and Facebook page in NYC; our community outreach coordinator, Anthony Ha kept in contact with the recipients for our event while based in Austin. So, distance isn’t particularly a large issue until it comes to large in-person events.
As you know, we’re big fans of Project Color Foundation. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are unincorporated, but we are definitely looking to file and incorporate in the future to work our way towards an official 501(c)(3) status. Since we started when we were young, we based the first 1.5 years at our high school as a club that ran events outside. We have been working remotely for the past 2.5 years as our officers are spread out in Dallas, Austin, and New York City.
As mentioned earlier, Project Color Foundation focuses on sharing the joy of the arts by giving communities more opportunities to express their interests in creativity despite their financial circumstances. Our main service is donating art supplies (colored pencils, acrylic paint, clay, brushes) to hospitals or school art programs. I think what sets us apart from others is our team and who we donate to. Our team is made up of a diverse group of college students with different backgrounds, but we’ve all come together due to our mutual interests in this organization. Since I was an art student in high school, I noticed how underfunded art programs were in comparison to other school programs and wanted to start changing this by donating supplies to elementary schools. Research shows that art is crucial in childhood because it allows the children to push out of their comfort zone and observe a less technical form of expressionism. However, in some areas, the only way children get to access this is through their school art classes. Our first donation was to Nathan Adams Elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas. At the time, we were all still in high school so we reached out to several clubs at Lake Ridge and asked them for help in promoting our event. Looking back, it was such a simple way to start our organization. The schools we decide to donate to are not based on a random premise. Our community service coordinator researches Title 1 schools in the DFW area and look through ones that have the highest number of free reduced lunch students. From there, we try to get in contact with the teachers and receptionists about the school. Sometimes, it’s a hit or miss as they may not always reply, but in the end, we still connect with a teacher that wants to accept our donations! Most of the time, we request a list of art supplies that the teachers feel like is most needed in their classes and we work to get those specific items.
I’m most proud of our fundraisers as the officers all closely work together to create a successful event. We hosted a summer art camp back in June of 2019 where we provided the children with fun activities like creating cards for Father’s Day, tie-dying shirts, designing bracelets, making slime, and a water balloon fight! We had raised most of the funding for this event several months prior with our sticker and t-shirt fundraisers, so we wanted to create a small event where children of all ages get to laugh and produce art together without their guardians being worried about having a large price to pay for.
We are still growing as an organization every day. After we get 501(c)(c) status, I hope to expand this nonprofit to other areas in Texas, and even nationally. But we are slowly working towards it little by little!
I want the readers to remember that creativity changes and we are always looking to collaborate with other organizations in order to make this change more apparent in many different art communities. Please contact us if you are interested!
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Communication and consistency is key! As college students, we oftentimes leave things on the back burner when we have to deal with school, work, internships, and other organizations but we have found a simple method that lets us work more efficiently in the Project Color Foundation: talking to one another. Being a small organization means there is a lot to get done, but sometimes it gets too overwhelming when we have many tasks to fulfill all at once. The officers and I always make sure to voice our thoughts or frustration if things get too hard, so we do our best to work around that!
Contact Info:
- Email: tvvienguyen@gmail.com (founder email for reaching out purposes)
- Email : projectcolorfdn@gmail.com
- Website: www.projectcolorfoundation.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/projectcolorfoundation
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/projectcolorfoundation
