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The 14th Annual Project Mana Leadership Retreat occurred this past year during the weekend of November 13 through the 15, 2009. This was Mujer’s fourteenth consecutive year for this Retreat and 108 Latinas in grades 8-12 attended from the greater Phoenix area and surround communities including San Luis, Casa Grande, Nogales and Tucson. The Project Mana Annual Leadership Retreat was held at the Chapel Rock Conference Site in Prescott, Arizona and for many of these girls this was their first experience outside of their local cities and/or communities. The facilitation of this annual Leadership Retreat for young Latinas is based on Mujer, Inc.’s Core Values of: Mentoring; Modeling; and, Mirroring. The annual leadership retreat emphasizes these core values and serves as the overarching theme at each of these Leadership Retreats. The 2009 Annual Project Mana Leadership Retreat curriculum was developed to promote leadership and self-esteem building tools for young Latinas, emphasizing methods in which young Latinas are able to gain insight on how to sustain themselves’ educationally and spiritually, and to develop a strong sense of self-esteem, self-respect, and cultural pride. The 2009 Retreat theme was “DANCE” the acronym for: Describe; Affirm; Negotiate; Change; Embody, all concepts were based on communication skills. In addition to the workshops that were delivered at the Retreat we were very fortunate to have had Catherine Anaya, Local Phoenix Anchorwoman for Channel 5 serve as our guest speaker. Ms. Anaya’s presentation was well received by the 108 participants and provided much support of the curriculum theme while also serving to support Mujer, Inc’s core values of mentoring, modeling and mirroring. The 2010 Project Mana Leadership Retreat curriculum is currently being developed and the roll-out of the training-of-trainers will be announced soon. In essence, each theme strives to focus on embodying a positive Latina body image, consuming healthy nutritional foods, learning to accept our bodies and being comfortable with one’s skin, deflecting Latina stereotyping, rejecting media exploitation of Latinas, building a strong sense of self and intellectually and physically participating in the retreat activities. If you are interested in making a difference in your community and would like to learn more, please consider joining Mujer, Inc. and sign up to volunteer for the Project Mana Committee. Thank you for your interest! Sylvia Vega
President |
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