Our Impact

  • Over 5,000 Latina youth engaged since 2000
  • Developed leadership, community engagement, and service learning skills for 100+ UW Latinx college students since 2015
  • 98% of those UW latinx college students graduate from UW and go on to professional careers or graduate school

Key Initiatives

The Wyoming Latina Youth Center contributes to strengthening individuals and Wyoming communities through uplifting our collective voices.


In a short time, the Wyoming Latina Youth Center has grown from an annual event- the Wyoming Latina Youth Conference- to a year-round community outreach and student academic program aimed at building pathways for Wyoming Latina youth to envision their success at the University of Wyoming and beyond. 

Leadership Program

The center’s leadership program is designed to help students hone their leadership skills. A College Leader participates in planning and organizing our annual youth conference. They practice leadership style and management with an assigned group of school-aged youth. College leaders also have the opportunity to participate in the environmental and outdoor education program.

Student Internships and Scholarships

The center offers two undergraduate internships to female identifying Latinx UW students. Our internship program is designed to foster the next generation of leaders through Latina related education, career development, and networking. Interns are fully integrated into staff activities and gain experience in administration, leadership, decision-making, conference organization, community engagement, and advocacy work. 


We strive to make our annual conference accessible and offer scholarships to cover registration costs. We also offer financial-need-based scholarships to students enrolled at UW as undergraduate or graduate students.

Community Engagement and Service Learning

 As a result of the success of our annual conference, many of our Wyoming community members have requested that we bring our college student leaders into their communities throughout the year to build a broader network of community involvement.  

Environment and Outdoors Education: Campeones para la Naturaleza

We propose to engage with Wyoming Latino/a/e community members through public outreach events connecting families and students with university and community members on a variety of topics such as conservation issues, climate change, drought, access to outdoor recreation, and the benefits of spending time outdoors through hands-on active learning workshops. Our goal is to work with Latino/a/e community members to engender trust and empower their voices to engage in their communities on environmental and sustainability issues that are key in Wyoming, such as conservation, water security, and outdoor recreation tourism. 


Language Justice

Language justice is an evolving framework based on the notion of respecting every student’s fundamental language rights—to be able to communicate, understand, and be understood in the language in which they prefer and feel most articulate and powerful. We embrace our dual language identities, bilingualism, Spanglish, Pocho, Caló, and other varieties and mixtures of the Spanish Language.


Our Partnerships and Best Practices

WLYC adopts the philosophical and best practices approach with COMMUNITY- ENGAGED METHODS: Fostering Partnerships for Community Engagement Community Voice and Power Sharing. A Guidebook written by: Jessica Shakesprere, Matthew Mizota, Rod Martinez, Hannah Daly, and Elsa Falkenburger (October 2021)

Best Practices

  • Examine our work through lenses of racial, ethnic, and gender equity, among others.
  • Compensate community members. Paying community members for their work on the project is important. Compensating the community makes relationships more equitable and shows that organizations view their partners as equally valued experts and contributors to the work.
  • Be aware of power dynamics. Power may stem from institutional position, authority, race/gender differences, or other factors that provide certain people with greater decision-making ability or increase their comfort in speaking up or taking on leadership roles.
  • Community members, participants, staff, students, and partners have strong voices. Creating an environment in which community members and individuals  feel comfortable speaking openly and honestly is essential to a good partnership and work environment. 


Share by: