Exciting things are happening at Casa Guadalupe in West Bend. Not only are they expanding and opening a satellite location in Hartford, Wis. They are also expanding their Fiesta Latina celebration to be two days instead of one! This week, Maria Gutierrez Gurrola & Jessie Plahmer join me to talk about their newly expanded celebration, which takes place on Friday, September 20th, and Saturday, September 21st, 2024 at Regner Park in West Bend!

• https://casaguadalupeonline.org/events/fiesta-latina/

The worst kind of weather for a big guy like me. Anyway, give me partly sunny and 63 any day. Hello, my fabulous friends, and thank you for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. My name is Fuzz Martin, and this is my show about positive things happening in. And around Washington County, Wisconsin. This week, we are talking about Fiesta Latina.

I have two great guests in the studio with me today. Maria Gutierrez Gurrola the executive director of Casa Guadalupe and Jessie Plahmer their community outreach specialist. They joined me to talk about Casa, their newly expanded Fiesta Latina celebration, and many ways that you are going to have such a great time.

And with that, here are Fifteen Minutes on Fiesta Latina with Maria Gutierrez Gurrola and Jessie Plammer, right here, on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.

Okay, before I get ahead of myself, Casa Guadalupe was first featured on the show back in Season 2, Episode 75, and now we're on Season 4, Episode 122. So, can you please give us a brief overview of Casa Guadalupe? and how the organization supports families and individuals in the Washington County area.

farther out than Washington County area. So we've been seeing an influx of people coming from surrounding counties to come see us. And, I'll add to that, that we've also expanded our services out to the Afghan community and we've just kind of branched out and who needs help and let us help you.

Yeah, so our focuses are on education programs, primarily, and, we are a resource center, but our primary focus is youth education, health education, and adult education.

How's it been going for you?

So, we have a second location. So, we haven't fully announced that yet. So, you're our first announcement of that. So, yeah. So, we'll notify the community to hopefully come join us out there when we do our launch for that.

Okay. So, we're fortunate to have a little lower level where Help Corner used to be. Sure. So, we rented out the space there. Yeah.

It's probably a barrier for some, right?

So like, Yes, the Latina and our fundraiser for scholarship funds, Noche de Vale. So that is my main job. But as you know, with, uh, no profits and being bilingual. We definitely, are busy, so I'm a certified interpreter, and I get to use that quite a bit at Casa Guadalupe, which is something exciting for me.

Excellent. Yeah. So that was pretty neat to see.

Because this is the first year that you're having two days. Yeah, that's amazing. So,

We're trialing it and hoping that we can eventually expand into three day. Oh, excellent. So

And just overall the entertainment. So we actually have also featured coming this year, some of our students in our programs. So they have their own bands, uh, vending, items and things like that. So we're looking to kind of give back to the community, in a big way. With our educational piece and things like that.

So all funds received will go back to all of our educational programs. So I think having an extra day is going to add more support to us so we can continue those programs.

So friends going out, we're going to have live music, drinks, and some vendors. So it's kind of more of a. Going out and hanging out kind of scene, but date night

So That is a really good mix so I think adding that extra night for people to go out and enjoy the culture with a little more freedom, you know, that'll be fun. Yeah,

What kind of, Popular attractions are we gonna have this year and how do they, celebrate Latin culture.

And then Saturday, we're super excited this year. Something different that we haven't done in years past is we're focusing more on the kids zone area, and we actually have a stage set up where there's entertainment from 12 to 6 all day. Essentially with different forms of entertainment, we're bringing in a magician, we're bringing in animals, we're bringing in different kind of aspects to the park, and then we'll also have a aerial artist coming in, which is different, and they'll be dancing to music, of our culture.

So, and then obviously we'll still have the bounce houses and games, and then, we'll have a, pepper eating contest, and we'll have a grito contest, which is something different this year. So that's a Hispanic, cultural tradition. We typically see that during Hispanic Heritage Month, and it's just people literally screaming, but in a manner that's how we do it.

They might run in.

Ready? Yeah,

I love it. That's awesome. That's awesome. I did turn my headphones, though, just for the

They actually come from Chicago. So we're super excited to have them back this year. Beautiful dresses. Just, you know, embracing that Latin culture. And then we also will have dance instruction. So if you want to learn how to dance, we will hopefully have some people there that can teach you.

And to add on to, what we have Friday night, we'll have two live bands. One of them is going to have some instruments that they're going to be playing like, drums and such. And, and the other one is going to be, a fun, um, Northern music from Mexico as well. So, yeah. Yeah.

So it's Loteria, so we're going to sell cards quick, bingos go really fast, so it'll be a fun game with the crowd that we're hopefully going to get enough participation and people want to play. All right. So throughout the event.

We are proud to share that with everybody, all the positive things that the Latin culture brings to the community and it is fun. Who doesn't love really good, tasty food? Who doesn't love good music? And it's a really wonderful connection. Our goal, besides bringing awareness of a culture and our organization.

And all the good things that we do is also to feel, to help people feel like, they belong, right? One another. So, Hispanic community belonging in the Washington County and surrounding areas. And also people who come and experience that, right? It's very, very important. Traditional, very authentic, and we want to show that.

So that is, we're opening with food and drinks and music. So right off the bat, it's just, hey, come join us to the party and come to Fiesta.

So that's what, one of the other reasons why we wanted to bring it to this, this date. Make the change. That's right.

How else do you engage with the community?

We do have one starting in September as well. So that'll be something fun coming up. But for the most part, any chance we get, we're more in the community as much as possible now.

Um.

So I understand a lot of people directly what they have gone through and, how you can better yourself when you come to the United States and, belong to these wonderful communities that are very welcoming and welcoming. Work here and just be part of an organization that also helps all the, all of those that are starting out or that they are here but they don't know where to go, they don't know resources, , they feel alone sometimes, you know, it's difficult to leave your family and your homes.

In my experience, I wanted to do it because I wanted to be bilingual and I wanted to experience that. But many other people don't have that choice. It is something that is a very hard choice to make. And for me, the most rewarding part is just to be able to belong to an organization that helps out and is full circle for me because now I'm on the given end and I can help others and guide them through, you know, for them to know that it's possible to better yourself, And belong to our community and do good and just, you know, it's a positive.

experience that everybody can have. It just, takes the right resources and knowledge and information. So I'm happy to be here helping with that. So

I mean, you're, you're obviously growing in Hartford now, but how do you see this growing into the future?

And that alone, I think, is going to drive the outreach that we're going to have within the community, the community at large and just overall. I think too, just from a leader's perspective, I'm so fortunate to have the staff that we have and all that they're doing to make everything successful. So for me, I have high hopes for our future and that we'll be more present in the community and people will know who we are when we say Casa Guadalupe.

Excellent.

So you can go to Casa Guadalupe Education Center page or, for those of us in the community, we have an Amigos Casa Guadalupe page as well. And any of those pages, we're constantly posting volunteer opportunities for ourselves and other agencies in the area as well. So.

We love that. We have really good partnerships right now, but we're looking forward to new ones, you know. So, people who are willing to embrace the culture and just see. What the positive things that the Latin community has to bring and has to offer to Washington County in general, so.

So, two hour shift, you can come in, get a cool shirt. Excellent. And then also, our, our programs are starting in the fall. So, we're constantly looking for reading, tutors. We're looking for guest speakers for Dream to Succeed students, which is our college life and career readiness program. And then we have a lot of English classes going on, so we're always looking for teachers.

So if anybody's interested, come see us.

2024, Regner Park, free admission. And, I wish you guys the best of luck. Thank you for all you do for the community. You're welcome back anytime. Just, just hollering and thanks for coming in the studio.

Very cool that they're expanding Fiesta Latina to two weeks this year. I hope you get out and enjoy that on September 20th and 21st. As always, if you have an idea for a guest for this podcast, feel free to let me know. Please do so. Reach out, suggest a guest by going to fuzzmartin. com slash guest. That is fuzzmartin.com slash guest. You can always email me fuzz at fuzzmartin. com. That is fuzzmartin. fuzz@fuzzmartin.com. New episodes come out on Tuesdays, and you can always find all of the episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts, YouTube, or you know fuzz martin.com. Thank you again for listening, and I will talk to you next week right here on 15 minutes with Fuzz.