The Seattle Center welcome Sign on Mercer Street announced the annual event a week before the Feb. 11th conference. Every year for the last ten, there has been a gathering of Latino high school youth brought together by a youth leadership project headed by members of the Mañana Coalition, located in the Rainer Valley.
The Mañana Coalition is a counseling and referral service for the Latino community called CONSEJO. They offer a variety of services including a place where Latino youth can voice their own concerns about preventative health measures. Some examples include substance abuse, drop out rates, loss of identity and loss of educational opportunity.
Officially, the Mañana Coalition is a drug and alcohol prevention program for teenagers that started in 1995. But through the years it has become more then that. Today The Mañana Coalition stays rooted to their mission statement: "to provide the support and resources for Latino youth to develop critical thinking, cultural pride, and recognition of the common struggles of all people and channel this knowledge into effecting progressive social change in their communities."
The Coalition also gives leadership training and opportunities outside of their annual conference with various training workshops, retreats and internships within CONSEJO and the greater Seattle community. Other programs include the peer-tutoring program for recent immigrant students at the Bilingual Orientation Center and supporting students wanting to continue or strengthen Latino organizations within their schools. Scholastic outreach has been done at Garfield, Cleveland and Franklin High schools as well as Aki Kurose Middle School.
The organization's collaboration with Seattle's Latino community revolves around kids, the core of their vision. The Mañana Coalition also seeks to spur activism at local levels while working toward the goal of recognizing and spreading unity within the community and instilling a strong sense of "pride in [their] culture, history and struggles"
Strength in numbers
The coalition takes pride in working year round to plan their conference held at the Seattle Center every February, usually around Valentine's day. As a result, the Mañana Coalition has come to be recognized throughout schools in King County for their annual this annual event put on for youth and organized by youth. This year's conference marked the coalition's ten-year anniversary, and its attendance continues to grow: over 700 participants this year.
After they entered the lobby in the Northwest rooms of the Seattle Center, students stayed closely packed together according to school while waiting to get registered. Experienced conference goers patiently wait while some exchange hugs, old friends re-meet, and new friends are made. Then, the students were all ushered into the Rainier Room for the morning session, commencing with a performance from local musical trio Arroz con Leche, who originally hail from Colombia. A warm applause welcomed this years keynote speaker, Francisca Garcia, who was introduced by Mañana-Coalition-member Martin Montalvo as the "Mañana Coalition Mama... for her deep commitment and love toward all members in the coalition."
Garcia's message had been instilled so strongly into the participants that day that by the end of the session, she had every person in the room chanting " Si se Puede, Si se puede" ("yes we can, yes we can").
"I'm so inspired that I could leave right now and walk away with a new confidence in who I am!" explained Miriam Ortega, whose same attitude seemed to be instilled within each student.
The conference consisted of twelve workshops including Finding Your Voice, Words That Sing, Beware of Addictions, Institutional Racism, College 101, Latino Clubs, What a Women's Worth, and Hip Hop 101, a comprehensive study of hip hop history and its influence on mainstream society.
The students chose a workshop for each of the two sessions. Two of the more grassroots-activist topics included starting Latino clubs in one's own school and a how-to session concerning attaining papers to become a U.S. citizen. Leading the legal papers discussion was Mañana Coalition founder Miguel Bocanegra.
After the workshops were finished, all the student groups got together to relax, have lunch, and tour the information fair as well as the student artwork display.
The Mañana Coalition's goal of helping Seattle's Latino youth to realize that empowerment and opportunity need not elude them seemed to be well received. If nothing else, the students knew that they belong to a community that is watching them and wanting to help them on their way to success.
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