13 Jun Project in the Works

My projects here at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is to reach out to the Latino community in the neighboring towns and find ways to bring them to the park. As part of that project, I’ve been working on translating the Junior Ranger Book for kids to Spanish, so that it is more accessible and more inclusive to the community. We want them to keep coming to the park even after we leave in August. So far what we are focusing on is the Carnaval Latino. We were able to secure a booth at the carnival and we are thinking of doing engaging activities with the kids where we can give them the ranger booklets and the ranger badges.

We were also able to have a meeting with the ALASI organization, which is the Asociación Latino Americana en el Sur de Indiana. We heard that they had previously worked with Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in the past,  but after covid and change of administration on both ends, ties ended. We are now working on bringing those ties back together and picking up where they had left off. For ALASI, the plan is to bring families here with the help of school buses and giving them a tour in Spanish. They don’t have any other resources here in Spanish so we will have to get the park film with subtitles and then I will be the one giving the tour to the families in Spanish. We were planning on having food trucks for the families to buy food and enjoy their stay here. My hope is that this will serve not only as an enrichment opportunity for our community, but also a way of networking for both parties. Our hope is that they will continue to work together in the future. 

Aside from our main project, we have also been planting beans, so I wanted to show those off as they are already growing so well and so fast. We planted about 7-8 boxes of beans and most of them have sprouted already. The beans in a way have come to represent how hard work and patience eventually leads to success. It is definitely very rewarding to see them sprouting so well after the effort that went into planting them.