TOPIC Latino Pride

Giselle Muriel prepares cookies for the welcome event at the prestigious Barnard College where she was accepted and where she will study with all expenses covered.

“Being able to go to a private school of my dreams without paying anything is so exciting for me and my family that they can see that their sacrifices were worth it,” said Muriel.

Her mother has always taken care of Giselle and her older sister, supporting them with their education while their father worked.

“To encourage them, because we always told them, ‘we don’t have the money to leave them, but the only thing we can leave them is their studies,'” said mother Myriam Mera.

Muriel is aware that she would never have been able to go to Barnard without a scholarship.

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“I didn’t want to think about that, about having to go into debt to get an education,” Muriel added.

The young woman was selected to the QuestBridge university preparation program in 2022, with which she was able to apply to Barnard College and obtain a scholarship of 300 thousand dollars.

To apply to the Questbridge College Preparatory Program, students must have a 3.9 GPA and come from families earning $65,000 a year or less.

I’m going to college.

Long Island High School counselor Norma Feriz-Gordon helped Muriel through the scholarship application process through the Questbridge program. And a second scholarship with the Urban Arts program that awards $60,000 to an outstanding student to help her college career.

Muriel will study computer science. Her goal is to be a software engineer, writing code. But she also wants to help young people from the Latino community to get interested in this field.

“I want to be like a model for them to tell them ‘look, I can do it, you can do it too'”.

Vilma Daza, a librarian who has dedicated more than two decades to helping the community, especially the immigrant community, retires from her work.

“I want to say that I am already happy because I have already sown the seeds, I have cultivated many plants and I have collected some fruits, but I am letting these other seeds germinate more and spread,” Daza said.

His immigrant story begins in a library when he arrived from Peru, where he worked as an economist, more than 30 years ago.

At 40 years old and with a daughter, Daza began taking free English classes at the Astoria library, where she was later hired to offer customer service.

“Age has nothing to do with it because we come with a certain amount of experience but not in language, but it can be developed,” added Daza.

Daza earned a master’s degree in library information that paved her way to work at more than 30 Queens library branches as a children’s librarian and assistant manager. She until she applied for the ‘manager’ position at Corona, where she worked for almost ten years.

“When I took this position I felt very happy, very happy because it was very competitive with people who were born here and speak perfect English and my English was improving,” Daza said.

In Corona, Daza saw a neighborhood full of immigrants like her who made their first stop at the library.

That motivated her to search all the resources of the library and also to partner with non-profit organizations and the private sector to provide free programs from Spanish and English classes to computers, sewing, arts and crafts.

Making a difference in the lives of immigrants like Blanca Baten from Guatemala.

“Here I learned Spanish. I mean, right now I’m learning English, I only know a little. So, that’s how I started Spanish,” Blanca said.

Daza’s great dedication has also touched the lives of her colleagues.

“She has been like a sister to me. I love her very much and as a professional she has helped me a lot, I have grown, and well, she is a person, an incredible leader,” said Blanca Silva, library supervisor in Corona.

Daza’s strong performance led to her receiving the $10,000 “Sloan Public Service Award” and being named one of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s ‘Great Immigrants.’

“I have to say that this legacy is learning, absorbing everything that is possible and then transferring it to society,” said Daza.

The Queens librarian plans to retire from this job but will continue her mission, she says, of serving the community.

He will return to Peru to create an organization that will help young people with educational and vocational opportunities.

“My job now is to help these people build something better for themselves. They are my roots.”