Building community
‘Project Butterflies’ connects Latina mothers and daughters in Franklin County
When Gabriela Loayza moved to the United States from Peru with her family in 2003 at the age of 30, she felt like an outsider.
“Where we live in New Albany is not very diverse,” Loayza said. “I can basically count the number of other families of color that live in the area. There are very, very few.”
Thousands of miles from her native home, Loayza was looking for a sense of community.
And yet not too far away from her new home, Yahaira Rose set out to create just that by providing resources for the local Latinx population.
Proyecto Mariposas (“Project Butterflies” in English) — which provides programming and support for mothers and daughters of this growing group — began in July 2011 out of Rose’s home in Westerville. Three years later, the organization became a registered nonprofit. Today, it has grown to serve about 120 girls and 50 mothers each year.
“It’s a way to provide Latina girls and their mothers a platform to be empowered, to have conversations, to bridge some gaps that were in the city,” Rose, 46, said.
Rose moved to Columbus 28 years ago from Puerto Rico. Throughout her time in central Ohio, she has seen the increasing needs of families such as Loayza’s.
“For me to start seeing how the city was growing in Latino population, there was still a need to provide some resources for the families and provide connections for people to feel at home even though they’re far away from their home country,” Rose said.
Ohio’s Hispanic population is about 456,000, double what it was in 2000, according to the 2018 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Proyecto Mariposas offers weekly activities focusing on everything from cooking to inner beauty. It also celebrates special events and occasions such as quinceaneras — a girl’s 15th birthday — and Hispanic Heritage Month to foster an understanding of and appreciation for culture, something Rose believes is especially important for the younger girls.
“One of the struggles we see with girls is they live in two types of cultures,” Rose said. “Sometimes they don’t feel like they’re from here or they don’t feel like they’re from their country, and it’s that in-between that they have to live in.”
Rose is the director of the Martin de Porres Center,
a ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Peace at Ohio Dominican University on the Northeast Side, and does her work for Proyecto Mariposas on a volunteer basis. The organization’s other volunteers are high school and university students and community members.
Pamela Conn, founder of Columbus Fit Life, which creates fitness programs for companies, has been volunteering with Proyecto Mariposas since it started. She and Rose met through a mutual friend, and Conn had an immediate appreciation for Rose’s vision.
“I am a huge believer in community, and I love the fact that she was looking to bring mothers and daughters together to strengthen the community,” Conn said.
Conn, 44 of New Albany, has volunteered with the organization on and off for about seven or eight years, helping out at special events. This year, she has been dedicating five to 10 hours each week to leading a program to teach families about functional nutrition, which includes a class via Zoom once a week.
Since March, much of Proyecto Mariposa’s programming has been relegated to Zoom and athome activities. Rose has put together free weekly boxes for participants to pick up, each filled with supplies for different activities, such as embroidery and making bath bombs, which can add essential oils, scents and bubbles to a bath.
She hosts six video calls every Tuesday with the girls, divided into groups by their age, to talk about that week’s activities as well as other topics.
The mothers have been connecting via video calls twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays since March. Loayza said she looks forward to them every week.
“We talk about everything, and it helps us,” Loayza, 47, said. “We try to have fun together and not feel like we’ve had to give up everything because we’re in the pandemic.”
Rose said the mothers started taking ownership of their own calls, using the time to discuss navigating the coming school year, being there for their kids and other struggles they’re facing. Some days, they’ll share their expertise on a certain topic, such as teaching the other mothers a recipe or how to sew. When it’s her turn, Loayza, an employee at Discover, plans to give a crash course on finance, with tips on reading and improving a credit score and preventing credit-card fraud.
This sense of community has been even more important in the past few months, during a time of staying at home and social distancing.
“I know that more than ever, we’re forced to be apart and as Latinas, we want to be together all the time,” Rose said. “But we are able to still support each other through (Proyecto Mariposa), and we’re able to still be connected.”
Loayza has come to see the other women in the organization — families and volunteers alike — as a second family for her daughters, now 15 and 17, because their extended family still lives in Peru.
“One important thing for me is having other adults in their life who I know can give good advice to my daughters when needed, and that the advice that they’re giving will be in line with our culture and our values,” she said.
She said she is also grateful that her daughters have had other Latina girls to share their experiences with, both negative and positive.
“They have opened up,” Loayza said. “Now they feel very confident to share their own experiences and share how people sometimes make fun of them. They’re not ashamed of sharing that type of information because they know they’re helping other girls overcome whatever obstacles they’re facing.” mfenter@dispatch.com @maya_with_a_y