Thank you everyone that participated in Immigrant Appreciation this year. We had a full day of events and are grateful that many student organizations (undergraduate and graduate) participated, as well as different departments, programs, offices, and faculty across UMBC. Please check out our photo album and add to it if you have any pictures.
This is the third time we have co-hosted an Immigrant Appreciation day on campus and always on May 1st. The first one was in 2016 and the second one in 2019. We have continuously collaborated with our colleagues in the Asian and Asian American Faculty Staff Council and we hope to continue to do so.
Undergraduate students led a craft table during the event
There are many reasons, and you may have your own, why we wanted to celebrate our immigrant communities on campus and beyond, but this year, we wanted to show our appreciation for the immigrant workers on campus, our immigrant grad students, undergrads, and our communities’ histories and stories.
Breakfast with Custodial Workers
We also wanted to honor the immigrant workers we lost in the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse this year. We wanted to honor: Miguel Luna, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, José Mynor López, Carlos Hernández and Alejandro Hernández Fuentes. For this reason we also commissioned a painting by UMBC artist Ghazal Mojtahedi. Students were able to add to her art a series of messages in different languages to honor the workers. Thank you Dr. María Sánchez for making this collaboration possible.
Thank you to all of our LHFA members for supporting this event. We were asked many times throughout the day if we were planning to do this again next year. What do we think?
Hope to see you in our May 17th meeting to discuss it.