MANA’s Zumbathon helps foster youth
EL CENTRO — MANA de Imperial Valley’s Back to School Zumbathon helped participants get a good cardio workout while also helping collect school supplies for as many as 400 children within Imperial County’s foster care system.
The event was held Friday night at the facilities of Imagine Schools.
“There is this great feeling of what the first day of school is like if you take that first, positive step and you have everything you need,” MANA President Martha Singh said. “We figured that we want to be part of that first step to make sure that they started the school year right.”
For either a $5 charge or a donation of school supplies, Zumba enthusiasts of all ages could participate in the event.
Held in the Imagine Schools cafeteria, approximately 100 participants donned glow sticks and danced away in a black-lighted room for a greater cause.
Doing a fundraiser centered on Zumba was MANA member Zinnia Villa’s idea. As a Zumba instructor for the past nine years, she volunteered to use her connections in the local Zumba scene bringing out Zumba
groups from through the Valley.
“I think my talent served to be able to give back to the community,” Villa said.
The two drop-off tables just outside the cafeteria were piled with donated backpacks and school supplies.
All money went directly to Imperial Valley Regional Occupation Program’s Project ACE, a foster youth program that MANA partnered with for the event.
Some organizations that couldn’t attend the event — such as Imperial Irrigation District, which donated 200 individual supplies for students — contributed beforehand, Singh explained.
“I’m proud of the community that we have here,” she said. “The community answered a call, and the call that we had is, ‘Please help us support our foster youth.’”
Prior to Friday’s event, members of MANA de Imperial Valley had attended a few workshops, where they heard local foster youth speak.
There were two common sentiments that echoed among the kids: that they feel unwanted and that many of them only have a plastic trash bag with which to carry their belongings as they’re placed into a new facility.
These messages resonated with MANA members and served as motivators for Friday’s fundraiser.
“We wanted to make sure that MANA was able to fill in a gap, and the gap that we wanted to do is to make sure that every student had whatever school supplies or materials they needed to start their year successfully,” Singh said. “We also wanted to make sure that any child that got moved from any facility or place had a sense of dignity, which is why we pushed so hard for the backpacks.”