Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jesse DeFlorio

Fiesta was the key word last week as both Asia Fest and the Encounter El Salvador team filled McGuire hall to near capacity with a variety of cultural-themed activities. With raffles, dancing and authentic food, the events aimed to draw large crowds to highlight some of the issues both organizations work to help. With Erase the Hate Week; an annual week that aims to focus on issues of injustice, wrapping up, the Asia Fest and Encounter El Salvador events seemed to fit in nicely.

Encounter El Salvador is an annual international immersion trip to the South American country. Every year, a group of faculty, staff, students and administrators take a 10-day trip to the capital, San Salvador to get to know the area and connect with the people. The fiesta, which took place on Thursday in McGuire, offered raffles and 5-dollar all-you-can-eat pizza to raise money for the trip, and donations for the people once the team reaches their destination.

The master of ceremonies for the night, Senior Dayna Pizzigoni, elaborated on the details of the program, "We'll be leaving for El Salvador two days after graduation, it's pretty exciting. We're going to be there for like, 10 days, and there are students, grad students, faculty members and staff coming. So, it's a really great program because it brings together students, faculty and the staff, and we're going to El Salvador to be in solidarity with the people there. We do a lot of witnessing to their experiences and the reality that still exists today from the war. We pick a theme, our theme this year is going to be focused on youth. So we'll learn about the economy there, but we're also going to be focusing on programs that they have for the youth. And this is our fiesta! The fiesta originally was just an event to have students come to know a little bit more about Encounter El Salvador, because [Project Mexico] is pretty big, and people know about it. Encounter came a couple years after, but it's not as popular. First it was an educational event, but now it's a fundraising event."

Some of the raffle prizes at Encounter El Salvador included an iPod shuffle, a Jenkins Parking spot and Yankees/Orioles baseball tickets. Raffle table coordinator, Maura Toomb, '08, emphasized on where the money raised would be going, "The way the raffle works is we've got six different items--this year, we've got Yankees tickets, an iPod shuffle, an authentic Salvador blanket, an Arbonne makeup basket, the very, very wanted Jenkins parking spot. Basically the money goes to--all of it, we're donating. The money goes to not necessarily our travels, but we're going to donate it to schools, and just, whatever we can help with down there. Basically, all the money is going to the El Salvadorian people. This isn't so much to support our travels, but to support them. I know as a team we've worked hard to make [the event] something that will both promote education and knowledge about El Salvador."

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools