Colombian with Down syndrome uses art to pursue dreams

By Diego Carranza

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Amid a relentless stream of discouraging news about the coronavirus pandemic, there are people who manage to overcome difficulties and break stereotypes, including Franco Parra Ortiz, a 22-year-old man from Bogota, Colombia with Down syndrome who dreams of becoming an art teacher.

Franco studies in a program called Links, an opportunity for children with cognitive disabilities that offers artistic and pedagogical activities to improve their quality of life. But in furthermore, he works painting and making drawings that he uses as the cover of notebooks that he sells to meet his own needs.

Anadolu Agency spoke with the young artist and with his father, Giovanny Aldo Parra, who some time ago resigned from his job to dedicate himself fully to his son and to the life project that the young man decided to undertake.

According to Parra, Franco “works on his paintings and spends a lot of time,” at least almost a month to each painting, working almost every day. A high resolution photograph is taken from the final product, with which can be made as many products as desired for the commercialization.

This family of entrepreneurs had already tried to do the same with suitcases and T-shirts. But they realized that a notebook is a good that almost everyone can buy and that is not that complicated to sell.

A friend of Giovanny's who has a publishing company helps them with the editing and printing of the notebooks, a project that, they say, started in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the sale of these notebooks has another added value. In addition to offering a booklet with a painting made by Franco on the cover, the deliveries are personalized.

Franco himself goes and delivers the notebooks directly to his clients. “He likes to go to deliver, and people like it a lot because a notebook is not arriving with a courier, but rather it is very well packaged and the artist hands them over,” Parra said.

- His beginnings and projects

What does this young artist paint?

“I paint mandalas, landscapes, clouds, trees, altarpieces, rainbows, buses, grass, cows,” said Franco with a confident and emotional voice.

Franco began in this world of art at the age of five, and had one of the best painters in Colombia and Latin America as an influence: the teacher Alfredo Araujo Santoyo, nephew of Enrique Grau, another great Colombian painter, and student of David Manzur himself.

Franco and Giovanny met Araujo Santoyo four years ago and since then he has become his teacher.

Part of the money Franco receives from sales is reinvested in the business. But another percentage has a medium and long-term purpose: Franco wants to travel to Spain, Italy and Russia.

The plans of this family duo are focused on a short course in Italy, while they are looking for foundations and cooperatives in Spain to achieve a sponsorship.

“We are going to do the trip, we won't lose anything […] Franco wants to go to Russia to see, there is a lot of art there,” said Giovanny.

- The dual purpose: teaching and making art

Since Franco was born, his parents knew that they had to work three times as hard to afford his teaching him.

Franco studied until the eighth grade of high school, and he saw the same subjects as any other child, but his parents decided to take him out of the school where he was and “promote into something in which he excelled: swimming and drawing.”

And that was when they started walking on the path of art.

When Giovanny realized that for a person like his son, with some kind of disability, accessing an educational or work opportunity was “almost impossible,” they decided to be entrepreneurs.

Therefore, their future plan is to create a cooperative or a training school where they themselves teach more families with people with special conditions, both physical and mental, to become entrepreneurs.

“For example, I can teach the family member or caregiver to undertake, and with Franco we can teach the other person art. Franco wants to be an art teacher,” says Parra.

Giovanny assures that “the secret” to achieve success in this process “is to convince the family member or caregiver [father, mother, uncle, etc.] that this person [with a disability] is capable of doing something and teach him to be an entrepreneur, but not only from the academic point of view, but also from the practical point of view. “For Franco the magic formula is patience, affection and love.”

From August 2020 to the end of January, Franco and Giovanny have managed to sell some 1,800 notebooks with designs made by a unique artist.

And today they are waiting for the gradual restart of classes in Bogota, “because so far there have been no good orders.”

“They have not taken off that much. I think a lot of people don’t have money and many did not enroll in colleges and universities, but we hope that we will do better in the remainder of the month,” concludes Giovanny.

*Daniela Mendoza contributed to this story