mussa

Mujeres Unidas Supporting Society Through the Arts is publishing a poetry book entitled Desnudas En El Desierto, the poems selected will focus on women. Nancy Lechuga and Rubi Orosco are heading this project to raise funds for the Chamizal Youth Project. "We came up with the idea of making a collection of poetry from women in the border, addressing issues of sexuality. So then, we thought of donating the proceeds of whatever money we made to some organization that helped women here in the El Paso area...but then we thought that it would be better for the money to go into workshops for youth. Once things were more clear as to what we were going to do we decided on having workshops next summer for The Chamizal Youth Project." Says Nancy. "During a focus group for the Chamizal Youth Project, Daniela said that she didn't think that the sex ed programs that were in place were helping, (and the other youth agreed) that the programs feel very impersonal and unrelatable. So Rubi and I were talking about how there needs to be a new approach to speaking to youth about sexuality. They are getting messages from the media, from everywhere and it is confusing to them. We wanted a sexual education program that is more relatable to youth, were they can feel comfortable asking questions, discussing their views...so we would address self esteem, influence of the media, etc. So, we got together to write the call for poetry submissions and decided to come up with a name, start a group here in El Paso. Mussa stands for (Mujeres Unidas supporting society through art) so this would be our first project, and after that hopefully it will continue and we can come up with different project to help the community, through the arts. We know that it is a pretty ambitious project, but we are hoping to get support from people and make it possible, we are also thinking of throwing a "book-release" party and make more money that way too. For information on mussa and the poetry submissions se Nancy Lechuga on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=278766&id=1268462258&comments=&alert=#/nlechuga