By Michael S. Hoey
Correspondent
The La Luz del Mundo (Light of the World) Church in Delavan hosted the second annual Hispanic Heritage Festival at Phoenix Park on Sept. 21.
Berenice Solis and her husband, Luis Solis, organized the free event.
Solis said the motivation for the event in its two years has been to bring the community together to celebrate similarities and differences between cultures. She said Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month.
“We want to share our heritage with everyone,” Solis said. “We all want the same things for our kids and the community.”
Solis said the event has something for everyone. The festival featured inflatable attractions for the kids, 25 vendor tents selling cultural items, food and entertainment.
The entertainment included a live mariachi band, a performance by the Dance Academy from Milwaukee, and singer Benjamin Mendez performing ranchero-style Mexican music.
Berenice and Luis Solis were guest speakers along with Ron Sandoval. The Solises shared some of their background, and their message was to get involved in the community and their kids’ education.
Sandoval, the Delavan-Darien School District’s new director of bilingual school and community education, spoke about the district’s new dual immersion language program. Sandoval was hired in July after administering two dual language immersion programs at other school districts in southeastern Wisconsin. He has taught English as a Second Language for more than five years.
According to the school district’s website, the programs Sandoval administered before coming to the district were models for various Midwestern and international schools looking to develop similar programs. Sandoval hopes to make the Delavan-Darien School District a leader in education by developing a new dual language immersion program that allows English- and Spanish-speaking students to learn both languages together resulting in a bilingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural group of learners who can thrive in a global society.
The program is slated to start in kindergarten and possibly first grade during the 2014-15 school year and expand from there in following years. This year, the focus is on informing the public about the benefits of the program and training staff.
The biggest addition to the festival this year was a quinceañera fashion show. A Quinceañera is a celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday in many Hispanic cultures like Mexico. Solis compared the celebration to a wedding. Solis said quinceañera, homecoming and prom dresses were part of the show and people could buy dresses at the festival from Alexa’s Boutique from downtown Delavan.
