Colorado Mountain College Salida (CMC) held their Día de Campo Picnic Day event on August 4, on the campus lawn at 349 East Ninth Street. CMC is a Colorado-designated Hispanic/Latino-serving higher education college, and it is part of its mission to reach out to the Spanish-speaking communities in its service area.
CMC held this hopefully annual event to bring awareness to non-English-speaking audiences of the learning opportunities available at the campus, as well as Spanish language services in the area. The event was a bilingual, with Spanish and English speakers present.
Many families attended the Día De Campo outreach event last Sunday. Photo: Floyd Rovano
Staff involved in financial programs were available to assist free of charge with the application process for financial aid.
Among the community organizations with information booths at the event; Chaffee County Public Health, Chaffee County Family and Youth Initiatives, Greater Arkansas River Nature Association, and Ark Valley Voice (AVV).
Manning the AVV booth were its Spanish-speaking AVV crew members, Michelle Pujol and Floyd Rovano. They demonstrated to picnic attendees how to switch between English and Spanish on the AVV news site by clicking on the flags at the bottom of the news site home page, or at the bottom of any news article.
An organizer tips the piñata, showering candies and toys on the children below. Photo: Floyd Rovano
There were games and activities for the younger crowd: cornhole, connect four, and, sitting on the sidewalk up to the doors, a piñata.
The piñata was lifted about halfway through the event, the bat was passed to the youngest child, and kids lined up behind her, waiting for their turn to take a whack at it.
Spectators sang a Mexican party song, ¡Dale, dale, dale!, to give kids their allotted time.
Featured image: the sidewalk set up on a hot Sunday afternoon required sun shades, but attendees remained enthusiastic. Photo by Floyd Rovano.
