Browse Items (19 total)

Yazmin García Rico is Director of Latinx and Hispanic Policy and Strategy at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS). She recounts her activism during her tenure in college, helping Latinx youth navigate college enrollment and her outreach efforts to connect farmworker communities with healthcare and other resources.…

Born in Guatemala but raised in Siler City, North Carolina, Hannia Benítez currently serves her local communities as Deputy Director at El Vínculo Hispano/The Hispanic Liaison’s office in Lee County and as Chair of Siler City’s Immigrant Community Advisory Committee (ICAC). Hannia shares her foundational experiences, including the need to be her…

Alba Sánchez is the Immigrant Welcome Center Manager at the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is originally from Costa Rica from a small town called San Rafael in the province of Heredia. She emigrated to the United States when she was twenty-six years old. In this interview, Sánchez explains what San Rafael was like,…

Rebecca Heines, better known as Becca, serves as the mentorship coordinator of North Carolina’s Service Learning Initiative (NC Sli). She also is a bilingual navigator at the University of North Carolina hospital in Chapel Hill. She discusses her experiences as a college student volunteering with organizations targeted towards the Latinx community.…

Eddy Fernandez is a 3rd-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill who discusses his family’s experience immigrating to Siler City, North Carolina from Texas for employment in the Townsend Chicken Processing Plant. He also discusses his experience growing up in Siler City, a rural area that was primarily Latinx/Latino/Latina. Fernandez explains the way in…

Kristina Caltabiano discusses her international experiences and how they have all shaped her identity. She talks about how central speaking Spanish is to her identity, and the battle present in valuing a transient lifestyle but also wanting a sense of community. Caltabiano makes comparisons between her Italian-American family to the families she…

Madison Hayes is the Executive Director of the Refugee Community Partnership in Carrboro, North Carolina. She explains her background in nonprofit and human rights work, both internationally and locally. Hayes discusses the history of power dynamics in service relationships and in research. She describes the formation of the Refugee Community…

Andreina Malki immigrated to the United States from the rural town of Paysandú, Uruguay in 2001 when she was thirteen years old. Her family moved after her father lost work due to the economic recession that impacted Uruguay, Argentina, and other countries in the region during that time. They moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where a community…

Patiño, a permanent US resident who emigrated from Mexico with his family when he was eleven years old, learned English in school and adjusted easily to the United States. In eigth grade, Patiño left school to go to Mexico with his mother to help care for his sick grandmother, and when they returned he no longer had the motivation to continue…

Joanna Antunez was born in the United States to a Mexican father and Salvadorian mother. Now in her mid-twenties, Antunez has lived with her family in Florida, Texas, and—since she was eleven years old—in North Carolina. Antunez is now studying to be a nurse at Alamance Community College and works at the Lenoir Dining Hall on the University of…