I work at an organization called Proyecto Pastoral, for those of you who weren't aware. Every year they host a woman's conference. Over 300 women attend and are provided with workshops on healing, wholeness, health and empowerment, among others. From the very beginning, I took it upon myself (and the rest of the youth program staff) to coordinate the Young Women's workshops.
It's always an empowering day for everyone, that goes without saying. The thing that always strikes me the most is the work that is done behind the scenes. When all the women are in the workshops, the staff and volunteers are outside hauling boxes of free items, cases of water, folding and unfolding chairs, dragging garbage bags back and forth. It's incredible, the amount of energy that goes into creating this day long conference.
Today was the third conference I assisted with. I regret that this was the only photo I was able to snap of this day. The photo above is one workshop I was assisting with on, of all things, deconstructing beauty.
It was pure coincidence, honestly.
Most of the young women in the workshop talked about beauty being on the inside and creating power with our personalities. Those young women who had more traditional views of beauty were younger women, and those who had not been a part of the conference before.
The young women who said that beauty was defined by our internal strengths all had attended the conference year after year.
This is amazing - I thought.
Later that day I went down to help out with the end of day logistics, and as I mentioned before, its wonderful to see everyone working so hard to make the day happen.
What I really wish I would have gotten a photo of were the 8 or so women (staff and volunteers with the organization), gathered to sip on margaritas with pride for the work they had accomplished that day. Myself being in one of this group, looked around at the rest of the women sitting there; their hair disheveled, t-shirts dusty and faces dirty and flushed from the sun, and thought I had never seen more beautiful women in the world.
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