Announcing the 2019-2020 Year of empowerment
Announcing the 2019-2020 Year of Empowerment: A year-long individualized leadership program with an emphasis on career exploration and development rooted in land, water and cultural identity. Application open now until July 15th. Move Mountains will also have larger, open trips for the youth of San Luis and the surrounding Culebra communities as space is available. Including Woodbine Ecology Center, Adaptive Sports Center and more.
Apply now!
A message from Shirley Romero Otero, President
and Miguel Huerta, Secretary of the Board
Since the summer of 2014, the Move Mountains Project has worked with 5 groups of youth leaders in San Luis, Colorado. We have seen the impact of the annual July leadership program and have worked to expand and deepen our impact through monthly activities for the community during the school year. We have worked with the youth of San Luis to foster civic engagement, academic success, and an understanding of the connections between identity and history. The youth of San Luis have had opportunities to share their stories and raise their voices across Colorado and their communities including at school board meetings, town hall gatherings, and the Colorado Appellate Courts in the fall of 2018.
Through ongoing assessments of our work and feedback from the youth and community, we feel that Move Mountains is at a pivotal point. We are at the point where we have an exciting opportunity to focus in and deepen our impact with the most engaged youth leaders. Moving forward, we will work with a smaller group of youth leaders who have consistently displayed the dedication and ability to help us lead Move Mountains and their community into a more just and sustainable world.
Beginning in August of 2019 and continuing into 2020, we will be rolling out a new youth leader program focused on career exploration and development. We have witnessed the needs of the youth change through the years and we want to meet those needs. We will do this by shifting how we as an organization deliver the support, personal development and cultural enrichment that our mission describes. Moving forward, we will work with youth who have applied and committed to a year long program which provides them both a scholarship for post-secondary education and a matching stipend for completion of the program.
The single change to the mission of Move Mountains is that we will no longer be focusing so heavily on the presentation at the annual Santa Ana y Santiago Celebration during the last weekend of July. We are shifting our focus away from putting on a labor intensive and costly production because we believe we have accomplished what we initially envisioned in 2014. Nal intent was to create more youth friendly and positive spaces during this holiday weekend. So many wonderful things are happening annually at Santa Ana now compared to previous years that we would like to step out of the way and enjoy the entertainment being presented.
The deepening of our work in this new and exciting way for the benefit of the youth will be made possible through the ongoing support of our funders such as the Chinook Fund as well as new support from individual donors and burgeoning relationships with regional, and national funding institutions.
Apply now!
A message from Shirley Romero Otero, President
and Miguel Huerta, Secretary of the Board
Since the summer of 2014, the Move Mountains Project has worked with 5 groups of youth leaders in San Luis, Colorado. We have seen the impact of the annual July leadership program and have worked to expand and deepen our impact through monthly activities for the community during the school year. We have worked with the youth of San Luis to foster civic engagement, academic success, and an understanding of the connections between identity and history. The youth of San Luis have had opportunities to share their stories and raise their voices across Colorado and their communities including at school board meetings, town hall gatherings, and the Colorado Appellate Courts in the fall of 2018.
Through ongoing assessments of our work and feedback from the youth and community, we feel that Move Mountains is at a pivotal point. We are at the point where we have an exciting opportunity to focus in and deepen our impact with the most engaged youth leaders. Moving forward, we will work with a smaller group of youth leaders who have consistently displayed the dedication and ability to help us lead Move Mountains and their community into a more just and sustainable world.
Beginning in August of 2019 and continuing into 2020, we will be rolling out a new youth leader program focused on career exploration and development. We have witnessed the needs of the youth change through the years and we want to meet those needs. We will do this by shifting how we as an organization deliver the support, personal development and cultural enrichment that our mission describes. Moving forward, we will work with youth who have applied and committed to a year long program which provides them both a scholarship for post-secondary education and a matching stipend for completion of the program.
The single change to the mission of Move Mountains is that we will no longer be focusing so heavily on the presentation at the annual Santa Ana y Santiago Celebration during the last weekend of July. We are shifting our focus away from putting on a labor intensive and costly production because we believe we have accomplished what we initially envisioned in 2014. Nal intent was to create more youth friendly and positive spaces during this holiday weekend. So many wonderful things are happening annually at Santa Ana now compared to previous years that we would like to step out of the way and enjoy the entertainment being presented.
The deepening of our work in this new and exciting way for the benefit of the youth will be made possible through the ongoing support of our funders such as the Chinook Fund as well as new support from individual donors and burgeoning relationships with regional, and national funding institutions.
PRESERVING Culture and TraditionsYouth engage with Grupo Sangre de Cristo, an activist group who has been focusing on preserving culture and traditions in the Sangre de Cristo area since 1981 to learn about teatro as a tool for social change. |
Anti-Bullying WorkshopsYouth engage in anti-bullying initiatives intended to give youth resources to create their own safe spaces in school. |
Community GardenThe youth have developed a long-tern project beginning in 2014 and are working with local farmers, grazers, ranchers, in partnership with organizations such as the Costilla County Conservancy District, the Costilla County Commissioners, University of Washington, and others to outreach to their communities to discuss critical land- and water-based issues such as the health of La Vega, non-GMO farming, seed sovereignty, and other related issues and build solutions. |
The Youth Leaders of the Move Mountains Project are re-invigorating the rural Chicano Movement and the age-old land rights struggle between the Mexicano-Mestizo-Indohispano-Chican@ heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant and powerful outside interests seeking the resources of an ancestral mountain. Move Mountains Projects, Incorporated provides the youth with experiences that encourage them to transform their struggling community by embracing their identities as heirs to the communal land of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant.
Our Mission
The Move Mountains Project is an art and entrepreneurship community education program building a sustainable platform for the youth leaders of San Luis, Colorado. Our mission is to encourage youth, as heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, to develop deeper understandings of art, resource preservation, and entrepreneurship in order to empower active community citizens through a focus on local and global social justice issues.
First Let'sInspire
Each year, we have expanded our programming as the Youth Leaders have guided us to find new ways to engage them and help them grow in their leadership and community action, with a special focus on summer programming. One ongoing series of projects began in 2014, in which youth developed strong relationships with organizations such as the Costilla County Senior Citizens’ Center and Alamosa University to focus on cultural preservation. They completed the oral history cultural sharing archival project entitled Voices of the Valley, focusing on loss of land and loss of language, and now plan to work with the San Luis Cultural Center to further develop cultural preservation projects.
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Now let's WORKCollaborate
Their work with community elders also led them to build solutions to ensure long-term food security for the most vulnerable populations of their communities. Related to that, Youth Leaders have worked since 2014 to engage other youth, families, and children in their communities on a drop-in basis in their community park, encouraging holistic health and community ownership of their park, contributing to their long-term goals of building a community center there. Another long-term project the youth have developed since 2014 is working with local farmers, grazers, ranchers, in partnership with organizations such as the Costilla County Conservancy District, the Costilla County Commissioners, University of Washington, and others to outreach to their communities to discuss critical land- and water-based issues such as the health of La Vega, non-GMO farming, seed sovereignty, and other related issues and build solutions.
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IT'S UP TO USChange
Summer 2017 programming focused on growing these initiatives while focusing as well on recent issues that the youth brought up throughout the year. We engaged in anti-bullying initiatives intended to give youth resources to create their own safe spaces in school. Youth also engaged with Grupo Sangre de Cristo, an activist group who has been focusing on preserving culture and traditions in the Sangre de Cristo area since 1981 to learn about teatro as a tool for social change. They built their knowledge of web presence social media and vlogging, connecting with global social justice movements with other young activists and leaders, and they set up plans to keep building.
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