Sister Cities of Houston

Sister Cities of Houston is a volunteer-driven nonprofit that fosters global friendships through culture, exchange, and collaboration. It connects Houston with 17 international sister cities through cultural, educational, economic, and civic programs — citizen diplomacy in action.

The redesign had one job: make it easy to take part. Events, membership, volunteering, sponsorship, and the sister-city directory needed to read as invitations — not as a content archive.

• Content outgrew structure

  Volunteer teams ship programs faster than navigation can keep up — pages multiply, hierarchy blurs.

• Every goal competed on every page

  Events, donations, membership, and city partnerships all asked for attention at once.

• Two audiences, one site

  First-time visitors needed orientation; returning members needed quick paths to act.

We reorganized the architecture around participation. From the home page, visitors can see what SCH is, what's coming up, how to volunteer, join, or sponsor — and reach the 17-city network through a consistent directory pattern.

sistercitieshouston.org

Home page — participation paths and impact, without burying the sister-city network.

A nonprofit site serves a broad public — families, students, sponsors, and volunteers. We prioritized clear typography, generous spacing, and contrast that holds up on phones in daylight. The mobile frame below shows how event and join paths stay reachable without competing chrome.

• A participation-first structure: events, membership, and volunteering are reachable from every entry point.
• A scalable directory pattern that grows with new sister-city partnerships.
• An accessible, readable visual system appropriate for a broad civic audience.
• A maintainable content structure a volunteer team can keep current.

Outcomes describe design intent for a shipped prior engagement — not Vyuha client metrics.