This bilingual program provides Latino children with reading tools in English and Spanish to help them become more independent and self-sufficient in their educational settings and surroundings. The program supports learning by advancing new strategies to:

• Address English language acquisition and reading readiness in both English and Spanish;
• Enrich students’ knowledge in English and Spanish so they become bilingual and value their heritage;
• Provide activities such as games, discussions, story time, family conferences, and gatherings; and collaborate with families to create learning materials grounded in the cultural values of Latinos.
• Let’s build skills in our Latino children to help them succeed and thrive in this country.

The VEA girls of Color reading and storytelling program is essential for leadership and empowerment to expose the girls to good reading materials and writers that will help them understand the importance of reading and storytelling. But, more specifically to help them love reading and learn their own value through good examples and great literature. This will in turn motivate them to understand how powerful their stories are. There is a real need for Latina girls and other girls of color to be more exposed to good literature and writers that will teach them good ways to read and understand leadership and empowerment through reading and writing.

The VEA girls of Color will be able to read several books and start the process of writing and telling their own stories through poetry, essays, short stories, or novels.

With Dr. Arcea Zapata de Aston’s leadership, the VEA, Voces en Acción/Voices in Action, Young Girls of Color Leaders in partnership with the Owensboro Museum of Science and History and thanks to a grant from Kentucky Foundation for Women provides the Owensboro young girls of color leaders some sessions in storytelling and creative writing to work closely with artists to enhance their talents and abilities to become leaders by telling their stories using their cultures’ music, cuisine, and other art making. The young girls of color leaders will develop an intercultural art community as a positive force for progressive cultural social change and self-determination. develop an intercultural art community as a positive force for progressive cultural, social change and self-determination that is intimately connected to their own history and traditions of stereotypes that have closed girls of color off from integration into society and the freedom they will experience in writing poetry, short stories, essays, novel, or documentary as a final testimony that they can perpetuate forever.