Latino Men’s Retreat a Great Success!
On Friday, November 16, OPALGA, in conjunction with Project VIDA in Chicago, took 17 young men between the ages of 18–24 to Watervliet, Michigan, for a three-day retreat with no cell phones, no iPods, and no contact with home. Over three days, the rigorous itinerary included structured activities such as creating their own life maps, writing a letter to themselves describing their most challenging life event, sharing it and burning it, exercise, group dining, and one-on-one counseling sessions for those who requested them.
According to Hector Salgado, OPALGA’s Latino men’s group coordinator and planner of this event, it was powerful to take these young men out of the clubs, where they are always trying to compete with one another, and bring them to a place where they really began to understand each other as people. Hector said that recurring themes included working through challenges with family, culture, and coming out and a need to let go of internalized anger. Hector felt that through this weekend, the young men were able to let go of a lot of self-imposed pressure and to learn to have more genuine relationships with each other. Evaluations completed by the attendees were overwhelmingly positive—comments included a desire to have another retreat that was longer but to improve the cooking!
We will give Hector some time to recover from this three-day event, but we would like to make this an annual event. We would like to thank the hard work and dedication of Hector Salgado, who hatched this plan earlier this year—his diligence paid off—and Celso Cardenas, our former ALAS coordinator, who volunteered his time for this event. Thanks to Carlos Samaniego and Project VIDA for their participation and fundraising and to Dr. Gary Harper from DePaul University. Also, a big thank-you to our donors for this event—Jan Grillos, Lori Hannigan, Ray Johnson, Donald Woolf, and JoAnn Ziebarth. All OPALGA members help to support multiple programs such as this. Your contributions and continued support of the organization make programs like this possible, and we thank you for contributing to the success of this event.
