Students publish Spanish children’s science book
Ciencia Para Todos is inviting the community to celebrate the publishing of their book with a release party at the Native Forum at Cal Poly Humboldt’s Behavioral and Social Sciences building Sept. 22 from 4-5:30 p.m.
Ciencia Para Todos is a club at Cal Poly Humboldt that was founded in 2019 by CPH students, Christian Trujillo, Diana Martinez and Odalis Avalos because of the lack of diversity in STEM classes on campus. They decided to come together to create a safe space for Spanish speaking students in STEM majors. Ciencia Para Todos aims to teach science education in order to inspire the next generation of the Spanish speaking community to realize that they too can work as STEM professionals.
“Our goal was to share our knowledge to children that are also Spanish-speaking,” said Desiree Osornio, a facilitator for Ciencia Para Todos and previous Spanish editor at El Leñador. “There’s people like us, you know, that are Spanish-speaking and people of color. That we can also be in the STEM field and not limit ourselves.”
The book is completely written in Spanish. All of the research and writing that went into creating this book was done by Latinx students of CPH.
“…It’s about the sun and the water. We’re covering the simple basics of the benefits that it provides to ourselves, the environment and why it’s important to take care of it,” said Jose Juan Rodriguez Gutierrez Hernandez Estrada, project manager for Ciencia Para Todos. “… So you can say it’s an interactive book so that students can engage in deeper conversations of the importance of basic elements that are around us and we may take for granted every day.”
Currently, Ciencia Para Todos has decided to focus on distributing the book to Latinx families within Humboldt County but their ultimate goal is to fundraise enough money to print more books and send them to countries in Latin America. Additionally, they are interested in potentially printing workbook versions of the children’s book in the future.
“I’m just excited to see where this book goes and just see what we’re able to do with it. Like who we are able to bring in from the community and make them feel welcome through this book,” said Marisa Morales, a member of Ciencia Para Todos.
At the release party there will be free food and a brief readthrough of the book. Ciencia Para Todos will host a panel discussion with the students that are currently enrolled about everything that it took to publish their children’s book. There is a limited number of books so Ciencia Para Todos will be distributing some of the books for free to families that RSVP to the release event over instagram (@cienciaparatodos_cph).
