A Latina women’s group, focused on leadership development and neighborhood organizing, started when a few women met at an aerobics class at a local recreation center. Most of the women had some experience as beauticians, so they started getting together and teaching each other better beauty styling tips.
Now they've gone beyond beauty and are also organizing around neighborhood issues. For instance, the group organized support for the family of Guadalupe Galeno Hernandez, a 12-year-old girl who was paralyzed last November in a drive-by shooting in the neighborhood. They have started a women's leadership group. The Twin Cities Daily Planet is teaching a four-part class on digital storytelling to the group, Mujeres en Acción y Poder, at the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization in Minneapolis.
It's time to tell their stories: A Catholic woman from Mexico never got confirmed when she was a teenager because her parents forced her to marry when she was 12 years old; she then fled her abusive marriage and only now is finally taking a catechism class. An Ecuadorian woman talked about the sacrifice it took to buy a computer—something she doesn’t know how to use and thinks she never will. But, she believes the computer is her daughter’s ticket to a good education and future in this country. Another woman explained how getting involved in a neighborhood clean-up effort changed her fear of her neighbors.
Combined, these stories hint at larger themes of assimilation, the digital divide, gender issues, and neighborhood/community organizing in South Minneapolis. We think this is a way to dig deep and tell the story of one Latina woman’s group in a way that combines media literacy, empowerment and education, and photojournalism. We think that is pretty rare and also really cool.
We’re putting together an audio slideshow for each story, about 7-10 in all. We’ve got the audio, and the women in the class can provide a few photos to help tell the story. But the Twin Cities Daily Planet would like to fund a reporter to shadow each woman at least once and take photos for each audio slideshow. We also need funds to support the production time (which includes translation into English) it takes to create each story. Can you help?
