Festejamos Juntxs – Latinx Celebration!
We had an amazing event a few weeks ago! We (the organizers behind Haida Gwaii LatinX Community aka Jessiquita Madrid and I) are also co-creators of the Salsa on Haida Gwaii group that meet every Thursday evening to grow the Salsa dancing community on island. As such, we had applied and got another grant – the Elizabeth Inkster award – to have a salsa teacher come up to teach a Salsa and Bachata workshop. We decided to combine both events at the same location and had an afternoon of dance workshops (12 to 5 pm) followed by our now annual Festejamos Juntos Latin American Culture celebration potluck and dance party! We had a good participation for both events, with kids and adults enjoying themselves, mingling, laughing, sharing food, stories and lots of hugs! People from 5 of the 7 island communities joined us in this celebration.
Participants gave us some feedback about certain elements they would like to see happen for next year (creating paper flags representing each country of origin of the participants and decorating the room with a banner of these flags was one suggestion) and return participants mentionned they greatly appreciated and enjoyed the efforts we put into this event and participating in the event itself!