Aliento Features: Juan Cisneros
Aliento Features - Juan Cisneros
Introduce yourself!
Hello everyone, my name is Juan Carlos Cisneros Suarez. I was born in Nogales Sonora, Mexico, and I immigrated to Phoenix, Arizona at the age of seven. I enjoy robotics and doing volunteer work.
How did you hear about the Aliento Fellowship, and why did you choose Aliento?
I heard of the fellowship during my senior year of high school when German applied to be in the first cohort. Throughout my senior year I worked with Aliento as an intern learning many things about politics. After I graduated high school, I went to Benedictine University where I wanted to set up an Aliento Hub.
Juan and German in 2018 during the Training for Education Day 2018
I initially chose Aliento for their focus on instate tuition and how much they involved the community. That was when I first interned for Aliento, the reason for choosing the fellowship is because of the above and also the focus on the mental hurdles a undocumented person has to go through. I wanted to continue the work from my senior year, connect Ben U with Aliento, and also work on mental health in the community so to me it was obvious that I should apply.
What are some of the things you’ve learned as a fellow? Why was it important?
Through the fellowship I learned a lot but something that stands out to me is taking control of your own story and valuing your path no matter what may be going around you. Once you are comfortable with your own story you will be able to appeal to many more people and have an easier time when sharing it.
Juan (top left) sharing his story with U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. Cardona!
Additionally I learned the value of having a dedicated team when planning things out, because no matter how invested you are, you will not be able to do all of the work. Communication is key when it comes to planning events be it small or large. The fellowship also allowed me to open up more about my insecurities and take control of my own time instead of always going along with things.
What are some moments within the fellowship that you are most proud of?
There are three big events I remember well and am proud to have been involved with. The Election day/efforts done leading up to the election, 2kfor2k, and the passing of SCR 1044.
The election efforts gave me my first opportunity to involve my school with Aliento by getting funding. With that funding I was then able to get some students hired to work with Aliento to do GOTV calls and make sure everyone understood the importance of the election. With that effort of the other students and myself we were able to host an online event at my school to inform the rest of the students about the election and what was at stake. Once the efforts were done we had to prepare for the actual election day which was fun to do, that was the first day I took photos for Aliento. It was the first event of the year where I got to see people in person. Additionally, it was great to see new faces join the GOTV efforts.
The next big event that comes to mind is the 2kfor2k. 2kfor2k was my own miniature campaign meant to bring some attention to the bill that we were pushing through and to bring new supporters. I had been working to get the challenge up for a while and finished planning things out about a week before the challenge went up live. So it was a race to get all the final things done before the challenge went live and to make sure people were interested in the challenge. Once the challenge actually took off, I saw a lot of people join in and pledge many many miles which was great to see, given that I thought I wasn’t even going to get 200 miles pledged, much less than the 2000 goal. By the end of the challenge, we were able to get the 2000 miles done and then some. I additionally saw many different groups of people join the challenge, be it from athletics groups to students who just wanted to support.
The last big event that will probably stay on my mind for a while is the day SCR 1044 passed in the House. That day I actually had to take 3 finals, and I wasn’t really expecting the bill to go up for a vote, but it did, which meant that I had to navigate my way around going to the Capital and finishing my semester off. When I got to the Capital, the bill was actually already being read, which meant that I had to rush up to the gallery and see the vote being done. When I saw the votes going through, I just remembered the whole journey when I first started interning for Aliento and seeing where we are now was very heartwarming to me.
Afterwards, we went outside and talked to a lot of the representatives who voted for the bill and thanked them. I saw a lot of familiar faces which I had talked to for the past 3 years. Later on that day, we held a press conference and I once again was taking photos for the event and seeing all the politicians and community leaders and students come together showed me how powerful the unified community was and showed me how important it was to not rush things. I know I joined three years ago, and I know others have been going at it for longer than I have, but it was still a big event for me because I had been putting in a lot of work to get the bill passed.
Besides Aliento, what else were you involved with at school? What did you do?
I was in the Jo Wilson Leadership Institute which focused on getting community service work through. By having guest speakers come in once a month and getting ideas for what we could do for our community. One thing that we were doing this last year was setting up food banks in venues, and we worked with other food banks in our community to learn how to run and manage a food bank. I was also in HSA(Hispanic Student Association) which was focusing on bringing Hispanic culture to the school and planning out events.
How is Ben U going?
Ben U has been interesting given the ongoing pandemic. It was difficult at first since there wasn’t any protocol in regards to doing regular classes online. Once there was a proper understanding of how to do the classes, it kinda went back to normal, making classes easy, and I could get help whenever I needed it. Now we’re looking into having hybrid classes, or going back to in-person classes. Since my freshmen year was cut short, I’m looking forward to finishing a full year of in-person learning.
How is it like navigating the system while undocumented?
It has been an interesting process trying to afford my tuition since half of it is paid by my scholarship. We have to pay the rest out of pocket and since it is just my mom who is making an income it creates a bit of issues, but I have been managing our finances so we can pay all our bills + our tuition. I hope that in the next few years I can find a more solid solution to my tuition.
Would you recommend the fellowship? Why?
I would highly recommend the fellowship to anyone who is interested in doing volunteer work or getting involved with the undocumented field, but I think the fellowship provides many different lessons that you could learn from many different places, but the fellowship puts together all those lessons into one experience.
The community that comes with Aliento and the staff in general is very supportive of whatever you’re trying to do so it makes it easy to transition into the fellowship position, and it makes it easy to plan events out and get things done. The fellowship also gives a lot of community building experiences as you work with other fellows to plan events and get information out to each others’ communities.
What’s next for you?
I am going to continue studying at BenU, hopefully graduating by 2023. Within the next 7 years, I hope to get more experience in leadership positions and in the field of computer science. This coming year, I’ll be a junior, and I’ll be taking up the position of vice president of programming, meaning that I'll be planning events out for students and find out ways for students to further connect with each other and the community.
If you would like to support the Aliento Fellowship program, you can do so by donating $50 today! We are getting ready for the Fourth cohort of Aliento Fellows! It takes $5000 to sponsor a fellow!