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By Ula Adamska, Spanish Department, Spanish Linguistics

Brianda Cervantes was born and raised in Mexico and has lived in Roaring Fork Valley, CO, for the past five years. Her community engagement started when her son was 1 year old as the Riverside School in Glenwood Springs was being built. Knowing that it would be the school that her son will attend one day, she got involved in planning and the creation of the school, providing her feedback and input as a parent volunteer. Still learning English, she soon joined the school as the Community Liaison. Her impact and enormous success in engaging the community resulted in expanding her work from one school to all 13 Roaring Valley schools, where today . Brianda sees it as her foremost responsibility to engage students’ families and bring their (often marginalized, Spanish-speaking) voices to the table. She’s committed to language justice and providing accessible information to all families, honoring their cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

What about your background, identities, and experiences have informed your community-engaged work?

I was born and raised in Mexico, where I graduated from law school. My career gave me the skills to be social, compassionate, empathetic, and always oriented to community service, and customer service. The daily interactions with clients who share their own struggles, their own stories – it humanized me, to the point that I'm able to see the inequities and injustice. And being here I have also taken different trainings that have built up my own skills. For example, I have learned how to conduct the one on one meeting, how to conduct the house meeting, how to have informal conversations, how to gather information, how to plan action, or how to call for action.

But also, I'm a mom and I'm part of the community. Having a kid in school, I have my own perspective as a mother about the issues that I see every single day with kiddos, so I try to be very involved with the PTA of my son's school. And I host the family advisory council. I think doing and hosting those meetings and spaces, and attending those training sessions have built the skills that I'm bringing to the table every time.

What are your values/theories/worldview and how do you put those elements into practice in your work with communities?

A year ago, we were having a retreat where we defined the team values we needed to have when it comes to performing our roles. So I want to share those top three: equity, trust, and compassion. 

Because we're working every single day with families, we have to have in mind that we're dealing with humans and every single person is dealing with something, or going through something. Now, because we're dealing with humans, we need to understand that it's not about what you can see, but also what you're not able to see, and what they're carrying that maybe you're not seeing, you need to be compassionate and understanding of the situation of every single family. And I would like to add maybe two more, that I feel like I always try to apply when I'm doing my role. And it's, of course, respect. I think respect is huge. Because it's not only about respecting your persona, but also respecting your ideas, and sometimes agreeing to disagree. And I'm gonna be there listening to the struggles and all the quejas, and I have to be able to listen to not-so-positive feedback because that's the way we're gonna grow. So I think respect is huge for my role. And the other one is integrity, I love performing my role with integrity. I feel like at the end, the cure of all the issues in the world is love. Because when you have love in your heart, you're gonna be human, and you will see the ways you can help others, of course, helping yourself first and then others. And that's the only way that we can create community.

It leads on to my next question, how are you able to nourish yourself while giving to others? And how do you maintain your motivations and take care of yourself?

I believe in mental health. So I do have a counselor myself. In my culture, we see mental health with a lot of stigmas. And most of the time we don't believe in the system, we don't believe in mental health. Being a single mother, I have been through a lot. And, there was a time in my life when I said, I can’t do it myself. So I'm gonna rely on an expert. And going on from that, being a single mom I feel that my son is my biggest motivation, he keeps me going all the time. And if one day, I feel like, “oh, I don't want to go to work,” then I say “no, I have to, because I have a kid that I have to provide for.” So I think that motivates me to the point where, even if I don't have the energy to do it, I have to. 

Another thing, coming from a culture of not knowing how to say NO, is learning how to say NO. It's been very useful for me when it comes to my mental health and just the capacity that I have. Saying NO sometimes is good, it will help you. The way I like to see it,  every time I say NO, I have a YES that's bigger. I have a reason. Bigger than that. Saying NO brings the perspective of not being a team player, not wanting to help others, or being selfish. And now I like to think: No, because if I'm saying NO, it's because I have a bigger reason why I am saying NO. So that has helped me and I'm still learning, every single day. Sometimes I remind myself: Wait a minute, you're taking so many appointments, or: You're taking so many roles, or: You're taking so many meetings, maybe slow down, you need to be okay, because if you're not okay, then you're not going to do your job the way you need to. And setting some boundaries. This is what I can, this is what I cannot, this is something that is feasible for me, this is something that is not feasible for me, this is part of my job description. I'm sorry, that's not part of my job description, even though maybe I can help, independently, and if I feel like I want to help, I will do it. But I think at least if you can make that clear, it will help you a lot.

How do you build relationships with your community partners and how do you maintain these relationships beyond and after your collaborations?

The way I connect with anyone, parents, students, community members, partners, the way that I approach them is basically with a one on one meeting. I have to create and build a relationship based on trust. And the first meeting is mostly to talk about myself, who I am as a person and I want to get to meet the other person on a very personal level too. I like it to be very personal–let's  be vulnerable here. Let me tell you about my experience, let me tell you about who I am, let me tell you about my background, let me tell you about my struggles. Can you share some of yours? 

Then, after the initial conversation about my experience, I ask them about their background, struggles and experience for another 30 minutes and after that is when I share my projects. And if it's a partner in the community I ask them to share with me what they are working on and brainstorming ideas on how we can collaborate. If it's a parent, I like to invite those parents to different spaces, depending on their skills and their interests. For some of them it might be being part of a PTA; and for some of them, it's actually engaging them in bigger settings, maybe being part of the family advisory council, maybe being part of the district accountability council, depending on the interest, their skills, how comfortable they feel about it. And that's, for me, the second meeting. 

And after that, I think one of the biggest keys to preserving those relationships, during and after a project, it's always being in touch with them. The huge one is the follow up. Follow ups are always very, very important. Because that's the way that your parents, or anyone, trust the work that you're doing. Because they're not gonna feel like you're only using them to get something out of them. They shared about their struggles and were vulnerable, they shared a piece of themselves, something very intimate. They shouldn’t wonder, “I don't know what she did with that…. is she gonna judge me for what I say?” So I feel like a follow up for sure needs to be there. You know, like those informal phone calls here and there, like being in the community outside. Since we have a very small community, learning their names is very important. And if I see them in a store, taking my time to at least acknowledge them and say hello.