As my DukeEngage comes to an end, I am so grateful for the opportunity I got to engage with the Latinx community here in Charlotte, NC. I have found myself stuck in the Duke bubble and in the bubble of my primarily white high school in the past couple of years, and being able to engage with this community has been wonderful. I have engaged with the Latinx community at Duke through Mi Gente and through Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Inc. but something I want to focus on next year is making the effort and time to become engaged with the Latinx community in Durham. Once I start school in the fall, I will obviously no longer be working full-time with an organization like the one I did during DukeEngage, but there are still options to become involved with the Latinx community as a volunteer. I do not know what next semester is going to look like with COVID-19, but I would love to become involved with one of the clubs that focuses on the Latinx community in Durham called GANO, or Gente Aprendiendo para Nuevas Oportunidades. GANO is an on-campus organization that teaches English to Latinx members of the local Durham community. I really wanted to get involved with the club last year, but because of time commitments, I was unable to. I think that time and time management will be the main obstacles that I will encounter when it comes to trying to continue engaging with the issues and community I worked with this summer. It was one thing working with the organizations remotely and during quarantine when I had basically nothing else to do, but once classes and extracurriculars and work starts back up again, things will be different. My goal for next year will be to prioritize working with the local Latinx community as much as I can.
