Thursday, February 4, 2010
www.msureporter.com
Minnesota State University, Mankato
A festival of fashion Walking in Two Worlds program to provide an international scope of beauty Monday MATT SAUER
staff writer
With winter now in full swing and the spring solstice still months away, students at MSU might be hard pressed to find beauty in the cold hands of a February in Minnesota: but sometimes beauty —and culture — can be found in the most unlikely of places. The YWCA’s Walking in Two Worlds program will be holding their second annual “International Festival of Fashion” this Monday, an opportunity for people from all cultural backgrounds to get together and celebrate their diversity through fashion and food. The Walking in Two Worlds program, first piloted in 2006 at the YWCA, is an organization of volunteers dedicated to helping young immigrant and refugee women in the Mankato community through education and community collaboration. “Our main goal is to help these women and their children connect to the community,” said Edell Fiedler, Director of the WTW. “A lot of these women came from warravaged countries, most of them not English-speaking. We help them with transportation and one-on-one
education, but what we’re really trying to do is help them connect with people in the [Mankato] community.” The WTW has assisted more than 350 immigrant or refugee women and their children during the past four years and is entrenched in cultural diversity, with nearly ten nationalities —including Somalis, Sudanese, Ethiopians, and Venezuelans — involved in the program. “[Fighting] language barriers is one of our biggest challenges,” said Fiedler. “A lot of the people we help are educated — many of them with university degrees—but still need help with [English] for finding jobs, or with meeting requirements so their degrees are accepted in the [U.S.].” Fiedler says many of the volunteers who help with the WTW program were once assisted by it, and use their own experiences when they help newly-American immigrants and refugees. Among those problems assisted by the
Fashion / page 18
wale agboola • msu reporter Grad student Adesola Adetoba shows off clothing from Africa. The Walking in Two Worlds fashion show is an opportunity to celebrate culture through fashion and food.
MSSA talks Latino Center
Senate passes proposal giving Multicultural Affairs a bigger office, moving ISA DANNIE HIGGINBOTHAM
news editor
index
wale agboola • msu reporter MSSA President Murtaza Rajabali addresses the senate during open forum Wednesday. He talked about the senate’s relationship with the administration. Editorial...................................6 Voices......................................7 Sports....................................13 Variety....................................17 Classifieds............................ 23
In a move that will hopefully silence the Latino Center controversy for at least a while, the Minnesota State Student Association passed a recommendation it hopes will satisfy all parties involved. Since a main reason stated for the proposed center was the need for more space, the Centennial Student Union boards suggested the
Multicultural Affairs office switch with the office for the International Student Association and combine the office with the neighboring Intercultural Student Center to create one large space. It recommended the ISA office be moved to the first floor of the CSU, into the space formerly occupied by the Veteran’s Center. Dilip Pokhrel, president of the ISA, said the organization
wouldn’t mind moving as long as it was able to retain enough space for the different cultural groups it represented. “The closeness to the International Center is also important,” he said. Suneel Parvathareddy, graduate assistant for the International Center, asked that the ISA not be moved to a smaller space, since it is already limited. The
Featured artist Maria Stark dabbles in a variety of mediums
MSSA / page 10
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