Spotlight: Brianna Rodriguez & Project Reunidos
By: Michelle Pujol
Brianna is a junior Health Science Studies major on the Pre-PA track at Baylor. She started "Project Reunidos" her senior year of high school for what began as her senior project and has now become an ongoing initiative. When Brianna was a senior, pictures of children in cages were trending on social media; she knew she had to do something to help her community and implement it into her senior project. A big part of what pushed her in this direction was her mom's small business. Her mom has been a small business owner for the past 15 years and has been a very significant resource for the Hispanic community of New Orleans. They usually go to her to purchase an airplane ticket for a flight the next day. The prices for this, as you can imagine, are normally absurd. The families urgently tried to find the money; they had detained the children, and immigration asked for the ticket. If they failed to provide the plane ticket, they would send their children to foster care or another detention facility. The conditions of these centers are inhumane, as we have all seen on the news and social media. Brianna's parents went through a divorce when she was 12 years old, "seeing the way a family is separated really hurt me, and I have always valued family being together, seeing these children being torn apart from their families at the border hurt me." She decided she wanted to start a project with the mission of reuniting families. Project Reunidos has partnered with many lawyers and organizations that help immigrant communities. When the families or children are detained, the lawyers contact Project Reunidos to provide the funds to be flown out to whatever city they need. They are coming into a new country where they don't speak the language and are being judged. Brianna has learned how to understand them and how to be compassionate. Project Reunidos has also done other things to help the community. For example, recently, a family's trailer home was completely lost in a fire, so Project Reunidos was able to raise money for them and help them get back on their feet. Brianna says, "Something I have learned through all of this is, sometimes in our culture, we are afraid to ask for help, we think we got it all, we shouldn't be afraid to ask for help. Our heart is to love others; everything is founded on love and compassion."
Brianna is currently working on a re-branding of Project Reunidos. She is starting it by designing and selling t-shirts that should be on sale soon! You can help Brianna keep Project Reunidos running by following them and what they are doing; just being aware of the situation is a big part of Project Reunidos. The immigrant community is looked down upon, and we need to remind the community that immigrants have a lot of value and are the backbone to this country.
Follow Project Reunidos on Instagram! @projectreunidos