COLOR

Over the rest of the semester, I'm going to be performing my service learning volunteer hours with COLOR, which stands for Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights. It took a while to arrange our first meeting, which I now know was a result of my contact abruptly having to take time off for personal reasons. It was a happy accident that I called in this afternoon and was invited to an event honoring Lorena Garcia, COLOR's new executive director, and I feel like I definitely can see myself enjoying the rest of my hours. This experience ended up being extremely informative regarding the history and mission of COLOR, and I got to meet many of the members and even some of their families.
        
While COLOR wasn't initially my first choice of organization, I think that I ultimately ended up in the right place. The event that I went to tonight was located at Rosalinda's Mexican Cafe, and the atmosphere was cheerful and welcoming. I met a woman named Mimi, who introduced me to the other board members. My initial thought was that I was surprised how young they all were. On second thought, I wished that I hadn't been surprised to meet a group of  successful, driven, intelligent young women running an awesome organization, but I'm not sure I've ever personally experienced any groups like it.  Learning about about all of their achievements was intriguing, I found myself agreeing with many of the objectives of COLOR, and these womens' level of commitment was inspiring.

My task during the night was to bring around the guest book/ scrapbook, which was a perfect first time job. Not only did I get to meet everyone and introduce myself, but I was also able to look at the pictures of COLOR's past activities, and learn more about their objectives. I am definitely a supporter of increased sex education and contraceptive availability, as well as pro-choice. COLOR is also active in the lgbt community, which is awesome!  I stayed for almost 2 hours before catching the bus home at 8, and feel more secure about the fate of my volunteer work, having made official contact.