By Ken Sain
Staff Writer
Chandler’s inaugural celebration at Contigo earned national recognition last year. Now, the city must try to achieve this.
The National League of Cities awarded the city’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) one of four Cultural Diversity Awards last spring for its first Chandler Contigo [Translation: Chandler with You] event held at Galveston Elementary School.
More than 1,200 people attended and witnessed representatives from 18 different Latin American cultures. Chandler was chosen best among cities with a population between 200,000 and half a million.
So how do you improve the event in your second year?
“We love winning the award because this year Council doubled our budget for Contigo, and that’s why things like this Willis program can happen,” said Niki Tapia, program manager for the city’s DEI office.
The number of events has more than doubled for a month-long celebration that begins on September 15. One of the new events is Latino Leaders Week, which will take place at Willis Junior High School starting September 19th.
Latino business leaders and other professionals will visit with a select group of Willis students to try and inspire them to pursue careers in their field.
Over the course of a week, approximately 50 students will hear from executives from Intel, healthcare, the Phoenix Suns front office, commerce, the military and public safety.
“Intel has our goals for 2030,” said Jennifer Sanchez, a community affairs manager for the tech giant. “Some of them are comprehensive: Doubling the number of women in technology roles by 40%; employees who identify with disabilities up to 5%; … increasing people of color in leadership roles.”
Sanchez said that for a young woman or person of color to be part of the pipeline that can eventually lead them to be a leader at Intel, they must be involved in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) education to in the fourth. degree.
Willis has one of the highest Latino populations within the Chandler Unified School District.
One of the scheduled speakers is Karla Bracamonte, who was born in Mexico. She and her boyfriend moved to Arizona when she was in college. She was pregnant and could not speak English. She received a work permit and worked at Arizona State University as a custodian. Two years later, she was taking engineering classes while raising her family.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and has been working for Intel for 16 years.
“Her daughter just graduated from medical school,” Sanchez said. “And she’s doing her residency here in Phoenix. So they just have such a great story.”
The Leaders Program is just one of the new events being added to Chandler Contigo this year, which is being held to recognize Hispanic Heritage Month.
“I think our goal is not only to celebrate the Latino community, but also the diversity within the Latino community,” Tapia said. “Because, yes, we are very close to Mexico and we have a large Mexican population here. But there are also different countries, there are Puerto Ricans, there are Cubans, there are Colombians. So it’s celebrating all Latinos.”
This year the Chandler Libraries are hosting just 50 events. Each of the four branches will have at least one signature event, and then a number of smaller ones, such as book readings.
Chandler Contigo will officially kick off at 5 p.m. Saturday, September 17 at the Chandler Community Center with live performances, food trucks, face painting and more.
The celebration in Galveston, which is the event that won the national award last year, is scheduled for 5:00 p.m., Friday, September 30.
There will be music, food, piñatas and Luchadores wrestling events throughout the month. There are also several films that celebrate Latino culture, including “Coco” and “Encanto.”
How do you try and improve at a national award winning event? Chandler is going to get bigger this year.
“The event was a lot of fun, and we didn’t skimp on the fun with this one,” Tapia said. “Everyone is looking forward to being involved this year and we will strive to make it better than ever.”
