Sobei Hamlin wants to help make the world a better place.
The 16-year-old sophomore at Durango High School is president of the Prejudice Elimination Action Team, a group that she said works hard to put a stop to bullying, racism and hate in city schools.
Hamlin and PEAT were part of San Juan Basin Health Department’s Diversity Dialogue on Saturday at the Durango Public Library, a series of workshops and exercises designed to help Durango’s Community Relations Commission better understand various social experiences and perspectives of people living in the community.
According to its mission statement, the Community Relations Commission focuses on social harmony, among residents and visitors. “To promote responsible actions, and positive examples of mutual respect and inclusive community participation,” it says in part.
“Most cities have a human-rights commission,” said commission member Crystal Harris, “and that’s what this is based on.”
Harris said the commission aims to make the community embracing and positive for all residents.
“We’re really focused on the positives of Durango and how to incorporate that for everyone,” she said. “We’re highlighting the diversity in our town.”
The event was sponsored by the Embracing Diversity Initiative, a youth-adult partnership that organizes and engages in cross-cultural education training and cultural sensitivity.
“This has its roots in the Children, Youth and Family Master Plan of 2007,” said Lauren Patterson of the health department. “The county set out on a yearlong process to develop the plan, and out of that was this notion of building assets for youths and making La Plata county a place where children, youths and families could thrive.”
Tatiana Hovland is a youth adviser for the initiative and spends time building focus groups to help her understand other young people’s experiences of social injustice, or positive reflections, as well. She said she is just trying to help people work together.
“We want to promote respect and good relationships within the community,” Hovland said.
The Embracing Diversity Initiative is composed of San Juan Basin Health’s Celebrating Healthy Communities Coalition, PEAT and two organizations from Fort Lewis College: El Centro de Muchos de Colores, a Hispanic cultural club, and Common Ground, a campuswide initiative that focuses on anti-discrimination and multicultural education.
“It’s all related to doing the right thing,” said Shirena Trujillo Long, coordinator for El Centro. “If you look at our past, people have always had to assimilate to a certain place to be here. I think it’s about us not having to assimilate, but acculturate, so we can keep the components of our heritage and not have to shed them.”
Common Ground’s Nancy Stoffer said the organization is made up of faculty, staff and students, all challenged with leading programs to educate others in cultural awareness, bias awareness and multicultural development. Stoffer, also vice-chairperson for the Community Relations Commission, said the college is only the beginning.
“The mission is to go beyond the campus,” she said.
Patterson said the annual dialogue is meant to celebrate Durango’s diversity.
“People reveal more of themselves in these types of experiential learning workshops,” she said. “We get to know one another. Take action to create social harmony in our community.”
Sobei, the DHS sophomore who orchestrated a few exercises, believes in change.
“It just takes one person to start a chain reaction, and I think our world needs that change,” she said. “It all starts with one person.”
bmathis@durangherald.com
