Student’s mask design adopted by CHI-St. Luke’s
Woodlands fifth-grader’s ‘Be Kind’ covering will be distributed to thousands of first responders and community volunteers
When officials from CHI-St. Luke’s The Woodlands Hospital called art teacher Suzanne Ettman and asked her to help develop a face mask design for the hospital’s new “Hello Humankindness” campaign, she didn’t hesitate to agree to assist with the effort.
“It was like out of the blue, St. Luke’s contacted us and asked us to take part and I said yes,” Ettman recalled.
That collaboration led to the unveiling recently of a new face mask designed by fifth-grader Isabella Del Valle, a student in Ettman’s art classes at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School.
The winning design, with stars and “Be Kind” on it, was a result of Ettman’s fourth- and fifthgrade art class students, who made dozens of designs and submitted them for review.
‘Giving them comfort’
Now, the new design will be printed on masks distributed to thousands of first responders such as EMTs, firefighters and police officers as well as hospital and health care staff, teachers, grocery store workers and other community volunteers, said a spokesperson for CHI-St. Luke’s The Woodlands Hospital.
Jim Parisi, north Houston market president of St. Luke’s Health, said the program to design the face mask with local students was “an extension of St. Luke’s Health’s new ‘Hello humankindness’ movement.”
He said as a faith-based health care provider, one goal is empathy and compassion and spreading kindness and joy is part of healing.
Parisi said the effort was especially important due to the stress inflicted upon society over the past 14 months.
“Our thought was, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, wouldn’t it make sense to reach out to an elementary school and get their feed back what human kindness means. We challenged them to design masks to potentially share with our first responders as a kindness gesture.”
Isabella helped distribute masks to members of The Woodlands Fire Department and said she was happy to help.
“Human kindness means to me, helping others and being nice to them, and giving them comfort. Being nice to others is a very important thing,” she said in a statement released by hospital officials. “I drew the design for this mask because I think that stars will brighten up your night and it will also brighten up some people’s hearts.”
Ettman, who teaches kindergarten through eighth grade art, lauded the students for their creativity, noting she gave them only the theme: kindness. “(Students) realize we all need to be kinder to each other,” she said. “A lot of people mentioned how you can’t see someone smile with the mask on and how the message on the masks we created would be so nice for officers or firefighters when they are helping someone.”
Wider student campaign
The recent efforts from the students at St. Anthony school are part of a larger campaign of charity from students and youth across Montgomery County during the pandemic.
Students from Conroe Independent School District schools as well as the John Cooper School have made or helped coordinate donations of face masks and other PPE since March 2020. There was also a “Help our Heroes” PPE campaign in the first six weeks of the pandemic.
Parisi said officials were glad to showcase the face masks and help inspire creativity from local youths in a positive manner.
The campaign of kindness is part of the hospital system, now under the umbrella of CommonSpirit Health. He said the camaraderie and support from everyone in the community during the pandemic has been inspiring.
“This is really just where we are in this world right now dealing with this pandemic and the stress and not being able to see people’s faces and smiles and things like that,” Parisi said. “To me it was the right time to talk about human kindness and the difference it can make in in our community and society. … You have to start with small steps, several small things can really help.”