Latinx(e) Student Collective Club First Volunteer Outing
Marshall Alvarado | September 16, 2025
The Latinx(e) Student Collective Club (LSC) of Warren Wilson College (WWC) recently planned, attended and volunteered at a festival honoring Hispanic Heritage Month, Culturas Unidas. The theme and title for this year was ‘United After Helene: Culturas Unidas Festival 2025,’ which showcased an afternoon full of music, traditional dances, local vendors, raffles, a special vigil, and performances by artists who came from Guadalajara, Mexico to show and honor Latinx culture, resilience and community.
This upcoming 30-day period, from September 15 to October 15, known as Hispanic Heritage Month, is a time when the U.S. acknowledges and honors the culture, history and contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities. Culturas Unidas, also known as United Cultures, was originally a celebration for the first Latino mural in McDowell County.
The LSC is a cultural-identity club for Latinx(e) students to come together and organize events inside and outside of WWC, having to do with Latino identity and culture. These range from celebrations to educational events, which vary in being open to the community, campus or just club members.
Before the festival, LSC members who were going to attend and volunteer were asked what their excitement and expectations were for the festival and the work they would do while there.
Mictehuatl Overla, a junior and one of the co-leaders of LSC, attended the festival the year before and helped to set up this year’s volunteering opportunity.
“I found it rewarding as somebody who had been away from home and felt disconnected from my family,” Overla said. “It was a wonderful experience to be able to be in a community with a bunch of Latinos from different countries in the same area, being able to eat our food and listen to music together.”
Ava McKinney-Taylor, a sophomore and member of LSC as well as co-leader of Wilson Alliance for Accessibility (WAFA), was excited to have the chance to see everyone in their element and community.
“It is important to me that I help the people in my community and the people that I love in any way I can,” McKinney-Taylor said. “Through volunteering, whether it be sitting and handing out wristbands or moving a couple of chairs or helping with tech and set up for something, I can help my community.”
Izzy Brown, a junior and another co-leader of LSC, mentioned how this was their first time going to this festival.
“The food [is] gonna be spectacular,” Brown said. “I'm excited to just see all of the performers because that's something that we don't get a lot here, and it's nice to go and have so many options on what to watch.”
The United Cultures festival itself was filled with local vendors selling traditional clothing, handmade jewelry, and authentic cuisine coming from many places in Latin America. After the mayor of Marion officially opened the festival with a supportive speech, performers came out. They varied from contestants representing their country and showcasing their pride in song or dance in a contest to the performers of Mexico en el Corazon, bringing in over 70 artists to play music and dance for the audience, telling stories through the show with their display.
The LSC has planned future events and is hoping to provide more volunteer opportunities
“I think that this festival and other volunteer opportunities that I can help push forward in the future, and just the entirety of this year's LSC programming, are going to be important because the Supreme Court just essentially made racial profiling legal,” Overla said. “It's a dangerous time right now, even if you and your family are citizens. There's no telling who could be picked up and where they would be taken. We are definitely leaning on each other right now, and this festival is a great strength to our community.”
Brown shared the same determination, commenting on how they were collaborating with the community engagement crew to make more volunteering opportunities available.
“We are working with community engagement to try and make more volunteering opportunities available,” Brown said. “The community engagement crew does trips to M. A. N. O. S., a program made to provide support to Spanish-speaking students with tutoring. We have a lot of LSC members who go on those trips to help with tutoring. As for other volunteer opportunities, we're talking about making some of our events this semester or this year fundraisers for different organizations in the community. I would like to organize more volunteer trips, but this is just the start of that.”
For the remainder of Hispanic Heritage Month, LSC has collaborated with the Library Circulation Crew in setting up a book display featuring topics related to the month, varying between history, arts, memoirs, and fiction.
The LSC is bringing back Café con Pan, an event that was previously held by the Spanish Language Crew, who collaborated with the LSC for it. The LSC hopes to give everyone a space to practice their Spanish and members within the club the opportunity to reconnect with their culture at the event. Next month, on October 24, the LSC will be collaborating with the Indigenous Student Association (ISA) on a movie night in the garden cabin, as well as the recurring event for Dia de los Muertos on November 2.
This Thursday, September 18, from 5:00-6:00 p.m., LSC will be hosting its first Cafe con Pan event in Ransom House. It will be open to students wanting to practice their Spanish or just come by and have some coffee with a sweet treat!