While thousands of students were busy stuffing their faces on Saturday during the Krispy Kreme Challenge, and a handful gathered for the HKonJ 7th annual march in downtown Raleigh, 30 N.C. State students spent their Saturday with high school students from the local Latino community to encourage minorities to pursue higher education.
The high school students, who affiliated with a 4-H program called Juntos, met with 18 college student volunteers to learn about the rigors and the benefits of a college career.
The purpose of the day was to allow high school students to connect with college students. The day began with icebreakers to help students from Yadkin, Wayne and Sampson counties get to know each other.
Students learned about service leadership opportunities, which complement the Juntos program, which bases itself on community outreach and leadership. Juntos, which means together in Spanish, encourages young Latino students to advocate for their community.
“[One goal for them coming here] was for them to get inspired, inspired by the students who are a part of Mi Familia, that are a part of Sube Ritmo, that are involved,” said Diana Urieta, the director of Juntos. “The culture that we’re trying to create with Juntos is that you have to give back to your community — you can’t just receive. So community service is huge for us, and leadership is a huge element of who we are.”
Academics contribute to the Juntos mentoring program, and college students shared tips and advice to inspire and help aspiring college students. Students also learned about www.collegegreenlight.com, a website created by Andrew Behnke, an assistant professor, which features a “green light meter” that measures students’ compatibilities with certain colleges and universities.
Edith Gonzalez, a senior at Yadkin Early College, said she found the panel session on college admissions very helpful.
“You don’t really think about [what you need to do to get to college], until they point it out to you,” Gonzalez said.
For the community service part of the day, students designed Valentine’s Day cards to be distributed to children at Duke’s Children’s Hospital. For Luis Aguilar, a junior at Clinton High School, making the Valentine’s cards stood out to him.
“They’re going through a hard stage right now, so every little bit helps, and that was a good touch,” Aguilar said.
Overall, the students experienced a varied day full of other activities which included a paper tower building competition and a special Latin dance lesson from N.C. State’s Latin dance team, Sube Ritmo. Members from Sube shared personal stories of how they did what had to be done to make it here, ranging from taking the military route to being the first in their families to attend college.
“Before I went to high school, I knew I wanted to go [to college],” said Maria Morales, a senior at Eastern Wayne High School. “But I was really nervous about what I wanted to do, and what field I wanted to go in. Coming here, they really helped me, they’ve been like, ‘It’s OK if you don’t know what you want to go into,’ and they’ve really motivated me, they’ve made me excited to actually go to college.”
