Aclamo Saddleback
Aclamo is a student club at Saddleback College, which helps Chicano and Latino students remove educational barriers in many different forms. It does this by offering outreach programs, taking trips to universities and creating a support system.
“The overall goal is to increase transfer rates within our community, we’ve done a couple campus trips just to see what’s out there,”Tania Carillo, 20, cultural anthropology, said.
Carillo explains that they have representatives from the University of California Irvine sister club and the University of California Merced give motivational speeches to the members.
“We go to schools and outreach to their seniors, so that when they transfer they can have a support system,” Carillo said.
The Aclamo club has been a part of Saddleback for two years, they have taken trips to colleges intended to give the members motivation to attend these universities.
“It has helped me speak up more. I was always shy but I’m not afraid to speak out in public as much anymore,” said Marco Madariaga, 21, two-year member of Aclamo.
Madariaga explained that Aclamo has given him opportunities he would not have expected such as giving him a job in the outreach department of the club, which is intended to scout new members.
The club recently hosted their first, “Coming out of the Shadows” event in March. The event empowered the movement of undocumented students on campus as they separated the myth from the truth. The myth being that undocumented workers do not contribute to society, which in fact they do.