Nota del Editor: El Collegian está empezando una sección para nuestros lectores que hablan Español. Articulos en Español va a estar en linea y en la impresión. Encontrar la versión original en Ingles aqui. Traducido por Daniela Navarro.

Editor’s Note: The Collegian is starting a section in Spanish for our Spanish-speaking readers. Spanish articles will be available online and in print. Find the English version here.

Building inclusive communities is an important part of social justice and the focus of the César Chávez Community Celebration happening this Thursday, following the CSUnite Walk.  

The celebration — which is the work of Colorado State University, Front Range Community College and the Poudre School District — will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Lory Student Center North Ballroom. 

This year, nine organizations will receive awards. Last year’s event acknowledged faculty members, who received awards for following the standards of César Chávez. This event has been held annually for the past 30 years, but with a new assistant director at El Centro the focus is beginning to change.

“The whole point of this is to bring together the community, especially with the social and political climate,” said Manuel De Real, the assistant director at El Centro. “Everything that César Chávez stands for, we want it to be a night of celebration, fun, food and acknowledgment of the student organizations that are doing some really good things in the community.”

There will be traditional Mexican folk dances, a speech from the CSU Ethnic Studies Department, an award ceremony and food. This year the event will award student organizations who have empowered others, supported programs that help those in need, worked towards social justice, and built and created unity.

Dani Diaz, a CSU student, and Gerardo Dominguez, a Front Range Student, will begin the event as the Masters of Ceremony. After the first folk dance, Eric Ishiwata, an associate professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at CSU, along with some of his students, will be speaking about the theme of building inclusive communities.

Next year, El Centro is looking to focus not only on César Chávez, but Larry Itliong, who started the movement, and Dolores Huerta, who fought alongside Chávez.

“We want to be more inclusive. We really want to call it the Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong Community Celebration,” De Real said. “(We want to) be more intentional about having an award for César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, specifically for women’s student organizations or individual women within the community, and one for Larry Itliong, that one would be more like a community partner or something along those lines.”

De Real says all students and community members are welcome to attend to the event.

Collegian reporter Daniela Navarro can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @thedanielazahra.