Viviana Fonseca Fuerez had been in Minneapolis less than three weeks when she came to pick up her children from Camp Colectiva last month. Her son and daughter were among a crowd of smiling kids who hopped off a bus at Theodore Wirth Regional Park, calling out to their parents, friends and counselors.
Fonseca Fuerez had learned about the summer camp from a WhatsApp group chat for newly arrived immigrant parents organized by Colectiva Bilingüe, a joint nonprofit organization for Minneapolis’ five public dual-immersion Spanish language schools. The camp aims to be a source of fun and community for newly arrived immigrant students in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Counselors are older students who have gone through the Spanish-immersion program.
The group ran its second annual Camp Colectiva this summer in conjunction with the Loppet Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes outdoor activities. The group returned to the Trailhead, Wirth Park’s large activities center, from an overnight summer camp experience in Excelsior to close out a week of outdoor activities and bonding as the school year approached. Some campers had only just arrived in the United States and are preparing to enter a new school in a new country.
Fonseca Fuerez came to Minnesota from Ecuador to join her brother, enduring a harrowing journey of long bus rides broken up by miles of walking that carried the family through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. “It was terrible, truly,” she said.
Now, she said, “We are going to stay here.”
Colectiva Bilingüe formed in 2020 after the Minneapolis school district passed the Comprehensive District Design measure, which sought to reorganize the district to minimize racial inequalities that persisted across the city.
After the redesign, Minneapolis offered Spanish dual-language programs at five schools: Andersen United Middle School; Emerson, Green Central and Las Estrellas elementary schools; and Roosevelt High School. Rather than divide resources among individual schools, parents formed Colectiva Bilingüe to function as a sort of parent-teacher organization, according to Molly Dengler, co-president of the Bilingual Education Collective. The group applies for grants and uses that money for programming.
Colectiva Bilingüe partnered last year with YMCA of the North to host about 25 kids for Camp Colectiva, which is funded by a No Child Left Inside grant from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. This year it partnered with the Loppet Foundation, which took 40 kids mountain biking, kayaking, orienteering and swimming.