Students crowded the student center ballroom on Oct. 19 for Bradley’s 4th Annual Latinx Regional Conference, which focused on providing networking opportunities, professional development and education to Bradley’s Latinx community.
“You all got up on a Saturday morning to come to a conference focusing on your professional development,” said Char Figueroa, keynote speaker and founder of the conference. “That’s a win.”
In her speech Figueroa, a 2016 Bradley graduate, addressed the overall conference theme of “Nuestra Lucha,” or “Our Fight.” While she vowed to continue to fight for the greater Latinx cause, she said she did not want to focus her speech on the hardships faced by the Latinx community.
Instead, she focused on what she called “nuestra propia lucha,” the fight for individual healing. She advised conference attendees to “get used to saying no” when they needed to focus on themselves, to “celebrate the wins” when they experienced them, and to ask for help when they needed it.
The conference was an all-day event, involving several workshops focusing on Latinx issues and opportunities. The workshop topics ranged from “machismo,” toxic masculinity in Latinx communities, to Latinx innovation to higher education.
“I enjoyed it a lot,” Kara Holder, a senior English and sociology major, said. “I liked each [workshop] for different reasons, but the one on ‘machismo’ was in a way the most interesting, because in sociology I’ve studied that on a general level but we learned about it on a deeper level.”
The conference concluded with a speech by Adrian Alvarez, head of the Bradley Association of International and Latino Alumni (BAILA), who supports student Latinx organizations as well.
Student organizations such as the Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA) and the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) among others, joined together to plan the conference. Members of the executive board of ALPFA communicated with the Latinx Caucus– a grouping of the executive members of Bradley’s various Latinx organizations– to help everything run smoothly.
“This year we were able to communicate our thoughts on this conference and all [the organizations] were able to participate,” Andrea Jara Reyes, president of ALPFA, said. “The leadership is something you can really see in this conference.”
Almost every Latinx organization on campus planned a workshop or volunteered.
“I think it was amazing,” Vanessa Renteria, a junior accounting major who has been to three conferences, said. “This was not here before, and the fact that all these Latinx organizations came together to put together this conference … was a huge accomplishment.”
Organizers thought the conference accomplished its objectives.
“I was just hoping for everybody to take something of value from it,” Reyes said. “And come back next year.”
