Dear Allies,
Thank you for your interest in facilitating a workshop at the 1st Annual Vassar College Immigrant Youth Empowerment Conference (IYEC).
As members of the local and regional community, we affirm our commitment and support of undocumented students and their families, on and off campus, and stand in direct opposition to those who threaten to harm them through intimidating and exclusionary practices and policies.
Our inaugural theme for the first year of the conference is “Stories of Resilience and Resistance”. The theme of our inaugural conference centers the stories of resilience and resistance of migration that have endured despite the troubled past and present of the immigration history in the United States. The conference will explore the different communication mediums that have been used to tell these familial, communal, and historical stories. How they have been passed on through the different generations in the form of sayings, songs, stories, paintings, books, and other forms of communication that affirm one’s continued presence in lands, communities, and spaces. Despite the xenophobic discourse about new arrivals that sadly persists in the media and across our society, we, the IYEC steering committee, present this theme and conference as a place and time where these stories of resilience and resistance of migration can be told and shared as a way of affirming the human dignity of all people despite their immigration status. And we also affirm that immigrants are not strangers but are our co-workers, our neighbors, our friends, and our families.
We seek workshops that will tell these stories of resistance and resilience through a variety of mediums. Our inaugural conference will be held at Vassar College on September 22, 2018, from 9am to 4pm. Workshops are all 50 minutes each and there will be two sets of concurrent workshop sessions; the exact time will be confirmed via email as VC IYEC approaches.
If you are interested in hosting a workshop, kindly fill out this form.
If you have any further questions or concerns about presenting a workshop, or any other logistics, please feel free to contact us at VCIYECWorkshops@gmail.com