What are you up to now?
Bilingual Community Organizer
Scholar Category: Immigration
Lupe Lopez
Project: Helping push a more supporting DACA/undocumented student agenda through CU. We want to take the opportunity of the statements CU admin have given to challenge them and provide options for students for the upcoming year and continuing.
Inspiration: I helped co-found an organization that was needed for undocumented students at the University and knew that a lot of work still needed to be done to address continuing issues but also a community we needed.
Future Plans for Project: CHANGE! We so far have been making progress in changing the culture at CU. It is time to use who ever wants to support and want to be in this fight to establish markers in our history at CU.
David Campos-Cardenas
Project: My goal is to empower the DACA / Undocumented students by showing them lawful knowledge. I am apart of two organizations, MSU Dreamers Network and DSF. At the MSU Dreamers Network; I gave knowledge to teachers and admin here at MSU. We conducted multiple presentations with the goal of giving faculty a little bit more understanding about the DACA community and how they can help strength our presence. With DSF, I help mentor DACA high school students. I teach them the principles of applying to colleges and scholarships.
Inspiration: I was once in their shoes. I don’t want any student feeling like they can’t go to college because of their citizenship status.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to make students feel like they have the capability of attending college. I want to make them feel like they’re worth a lot more then what they think.
Anarely Marquez-Gomez
Project: Raices is a community organization which provides legal services and presentations to immigrants in the Denver area and beyond. I have partnered with the AILA and various groups to provide legal workshops on various themes such as, “What to do if ICE is at your door,” “Roadways to Citizenship,” and individual connections with lawyers. The project has had tremendous success and has helped bring ease of mind to the community!
Inspiration: I am a Dreamer and I have always noticed the crippling fear that swept through the community due to a lack of knowledge about individual rights.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to bring knowledge to the community and allow them to extend their full potential by giving them the confidence necessary to navigate the legal system.
Alondra Palomino
Project: This year I really want to put together all of my work that I have done the past year. Ideally, I would love to have a consistent schedule or program in which I continue to facilitate parent workshops on the college application process but also include more diversity into the presentation. I would like to have one presentation every two weeks on different topics. One major topic I would like to discuss would be having a safe space to allow for an open dialogue on the current political climate in which parents can feel free to express their feelings. I also want to have one day where an immigration attorney comes and discusses how undocumented immigrants are being affected and how to help the cause. I have come to enjoy doing the presentations but I also want to have an impact and a project that can be sustainable and I can continue doing past graduation.
Inspiration: My family has always been my biggest support system and inspiration for my Puksta Project and life in general. Coming from an undocumented mother and most of my family belong undocumented, I have always felt the need to protect them and involve myself in organizations and activities that support them. I feel have the duty to prove to them and myself that their sacrifice was worth it. As a first generation student I also want to show my siblings that it is possible to achieve higher goals with perseverance, sacrifice and help with the process.
Future Plans for Project: I hope that through my parent workshops there are parents who feel more comfortable in tackling the college application process and feel more confident in supporting their student through their new journey. I also hope that those parents then can help out other parents and students, becoming into cycle. I want to make sure that even though students are supposed to get post secondary education information in high school there is still a lack of support for those students and it is important for them to have a strong support from their parents.
Edwin Mendoza Olea
Project: My Puksta Project for the upcoming year is to unite all Colorado campuses and student groups that work with DACA and undocumented students and continue advocating for DACA students.
Inspiration: I myself am a DACA recipient so I have first hand experience on what it feels like to grow up being undocumented and some of the struggles that come with it and i want to facilitate some of those struggles for others.
Future Plans for Project: What I plan to accomplish is to be an advocate for DACA students and unite people in making a change and push acts like Dream Act, Bridge Act, and American Hope Act.
Gabriela Solano Serna
Project: My Puksta Project for this upcoming academic year is to get involved with different social services agencies that promote a change among the healthcare disparities among low-income and undocumented communities. I plan to work along social services agencies that have hands on help or that provide the tools, information, and needs certain communities are limited to.
Inspiration: What inspired to choose my Puksta Project was my own personal and family experience. Coming from an undocumented family and being an undocumented myself I know the struggles and obstacles families face to receive access or adequate healthcare services. In fact, the current policies and social aspects of our society took take this social issues to the attention of others as many people are not aware.
Future Plans for Project: I truly honestly hope to become the start of change and aspirations of future generation to pursue the same passion to make a change within our communities and the healthcare. I defiantly try my best to in fact start a new organization or join any social services that reaches to the community on personal level specially in our current political climate. Help families get access to proper information on payments options, guidance, and language barriers support.
