Local organization Adelante Mujeres will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Within those 10 years, Adelante Mujeres has regularly been involved with the student population at Pacific University and, more specifically, has had close ties with the Center for Gender Equity. With this relationship, CGE and Adelante Mujeres are able to host events together like the bi lingual reading being held on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. in the U.C.
At the reading, women in the Adelante Mujeres program will be sharing poems and personal stories of their experiences with the audience. These stories will be accompanied by photos of the program and its participants taken by Pacific students.
The long-standing partnership between Adelante Mujeres and CGE has been very helpful according to Carrie Pederson, volunteer coordinator of Adelante Mujeres. For many of the women in the program, Pacific is the first college campus they have set foot on. According to Pederson, this gives them a taste of college life and in some instances, gives them a desire to pursue their education further. Working with the literature department and some of the students who volunteer with Adelante Mujeres allows some of the readers to get a feel for academic life at Pacific as well.
Perhaps even more importantly, is the connection that these women can potentially build with not only the student population and those who decide to volunteer, but the outside community as a whole. By sharing their work, Pederson said the program has an opportunity to “showcase who we are” and in return allow students to “feel more connected to the community they’re in.”
The overall outcome the program is hoping for with their upcoming event is outreach because as Pederson said they are consistently “looking for ways to connect with people in the community.”
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