A breast cancer oral history project, a multi-cultural family website project, an action research project for Latina home health care trainees and Asian childcare providers, and a Chinese festival project for seniors are among the efforts that were nurtured. Developing a Bilingual Writing Workshop Loren McGrail Loren is working with a group of Latina and Latino community organizers in Durham, North Carolina, to develop a six-session bilingual writing workshop series to explore their work as community organizers. The participants come from three different countries, do not all speak Spanish as a first language, and speak and write at different levels of English. Writing is a tool for clarifying thoughts and ideas and a way to tell the stories of how they came to do this work and why it is important to them. Each session includes journal or reflective writing, pair writing, language experience writing, and speed writes.
Participants also learn how to use simple word processing to develop their pieces.
Spanish and English texts are used as catalysts for the writings. The group's writings will go into the next edition of Not By Myself, a magazine published by Literacy South. The other writings in this issue come from a series of writing events done with women making the transition off welfare. The issue will include descriptions of the process and examples of the writing prompts used. The learners at CASA Latina , a community-based program in Seattle, Washington, are a highly transcient population of limited English speaking migrant laborers from Mexico and Central America, with low literacy skills and very immediate survival needs.