TFish at the Mountain View Arts on Wine Festival

On Saturday and Sunday, September 7th and 8th, TFish attended the Mountain View Arts and Wine Festival in downtown Mountain View to promote its transparency cause and fundraise for NGOs that aid underprivileged communities. 

SATURDAY RECAP
TFish continued its “Color a Fish” campaign from the Los Altos Arts and Wine Festival and the Nihonmachi Street Fair where attendees were invited to color a fish. For every fish colored, the Ping & Amy Chao foundation will match $1, and all proceeds will go to the NGOs.  

However, unlike past events, today, TFish focused solely on fundraising for Little Red Scarf, an organization that provides financial support for children with congenital heart disease in rural China. Little Red Scarf is currently sponsoring an eight-year old girl named Xie-le, whose family owes up to $34,000 in medical loans. After undergoing two heart surgeries at Lanzhou University First Hospital, she recovered after three weeks of intensive care, but her family is currently swamped with huge debts. In order to relieve their financial burden, TFish hopes to raise $500 to help Xie-le’s parents pay off the surgery loans. 

150 fishes were colored on Saturday, raising a total of $150 and $86.80 in cash donations for Xiele's heart surgery. On Sunday, the “Color a Fish” campaign will be focused on coloring fish to support TFish's transparency cause.

SUNDAY RECAP
On Sunday, September 8th, TFish Fund attended the Mountain View Arts and Wine Festival again. However, unlike Saturday, we focused on promoting transparency and raising awareness for NGOs. We got a whole ton of people to color a fish and show support for our cause!

Though the majority of the fish colorers were children, a good amount of adults and teenagers agreed to color! And my, oh my, did we see some great designs! It was so lovely that such a creative crowd was showing support for us through their artistic skills. I met so many interesting people that were very eager to learn about what TFish Fund does.

The Mountain View/Los Altos community has definitely shown their support for us today. Not only did they color, but they also donated what spare change they had. We came to an even total of 70 dollars in donation! Though some people may overlook this amount, this much money can possibly change the life of someone else where.

Overall, we got approximately 200 fish colored today. It was very rewarding to watch kids place their artwork proudly on our banner. 

This event was such a success. We, the interns, were really able to reach out to more people. Though not everyone colored, a good majority of the crowd at the festival heard a speech about what TFish Fund does and why we most promote transparency. This time, people were very willing to listen and seemed like they were interested in checking out the website. We hope and expect future festivals to be as successful as this! The interns worked really great together and formed a really strong team with strong friendships. The community learned a lot about social justice and were hopefully inspired to create change.

Reporters: Allison Sun and Katie Lan, East Villagers Service Scholar Interns