Listening To Latinas

Kristin Riegel ’10 (Batavia, New York) is fascinated by how people are represented—or misrepresented— in the media. Expanding on a project that she and some classmates developed in a “Media Institutions” class, she designed the ¡Yo, Latina! program to address the lack of young Latina voices in the Twin Cities media. The Phillips Family Foundation thought she was onto something and granted her more than $15,000 to develop workshops to teach Latina teens how to publish an electronic magazine of their own.

Riegel has worked with peer educators at her community partner organization, Casa de Esperanza, whose mission is to mobilize the Latino community to end domestic violence. She also received a Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur grant and an Action Fund award to expand her project.

After a year of preparation, Riegel launched the workshops last June. The group met twice weekly for four weeks at Casa de Esperanza and at Macalester. Through the workshops, five Latina teens learned the media skills necessary to publish an e-zine, including digital photography, creative writing, and graphic design. “I would have never seen myself doing anything like this,” says participant Nallely Castro, “so Camp us news summ ary it’s been really cool to learn how to write articles and design the magazine.”

The workshops also provided a safe space for group discussion and leadership development. Guest speakers included awardwinning photographer Wing Young Huie; a representative from TVbyGIRLS, which deals with messages about women in the media; and Adriana Rimpel, a former Phillips Scholar now working as a photographer. Part of Riegel’s work during her senior year will be to help these young women sustain their e-zine project, which is designed to serve as a resource for the larger Latino community.

Although the prototype e-zine is not publicly available, Riegel’s long-term goal is to help the teens produce their ¡Yo, Latina! magazine twice a year.

After graduation, Riegel may attend divinity school to become a minister. She will be able to consider that goal more easily now, thanks to having also won a $2,000 Fund for Theological Education Undergraduate Fellowship grant, designed to help college students explore the possibility of ministry as a vocation.