10 Year Anniversary Celebration

November 10th, 2022

 

Dear ISLA community:

 

We are happy to share with you our journey in hosting our 10 Year Anniversary Celebration that occurred on Friday, October 14th, 2022. It all started with an idea to host an event where our families, students and supporters can celebrate 10 years of ISLA building community and leadership through our educational Spanish language and cultural immersion programs. We wanted to be able to give back to our community and find a way where we can all come together as a family. We decided to host this event where we normally host our ISLA Los Sabados program, at St. Thomas More. We gathered community members who wanted to give back to their community and had catering from several local businesses, such as El Cuscatleco, Spanglish, and Alpaca, and we even had a couple of nonprofits be a part of it too, such as We Are and Kidzu Children’s Museum. With all our collective power, we successfully organized our Baile de ISLA for our 10 Year Anniversary. Despite a couple of minor obstacles we faced, such as Hurricane Ian, we were able to surpass them and turn it into a huge win for our ISLA community. 

 

That night, we announced our 10 Años Más con ISLA Fall Fundraising Campaign, which is our fall fundraiser with a goal of raising $100,000 to continue promoting bilingualism, cultural immersion and equity for Hispanic/Latino/x families and children in NC. There are 6 ways you can support our work:

 

  1. Become a monthly sustainer
  2. One-Time Donation
  3. Join our Business Network
  4. In-Kind Donation
  5. Buy our book
  6. Buy SWAG from our online shop

 

After announcing our fall fundraiser, we danced the night away with our families, students and supporters who continue to support ISLA and all we do. We want everyone to continue getting to know ISLA and we hope you can join us in these next two months as we raise money to promote education, community and sustainability. With your support, ISLA will be able to continue cultivating culturally affirming education spaces for children through all of our programs and will continue advocating for the prioritization of high quality education for all students. We will be able to set an example of sustaining free equitable programming through community support and commitment to dismantling historical barriers in our education system. ISLA will also continue to center our value of collective power, where we come together as a community to elevate the strength that we have together versus apart. 

 

We look forward to having you join us and we hope we can count on your support for 10 more years of ISLA. 

Sincerely,

 

Dominique Ospina