by Beny Penaloza-Betancourt, Destination Engagement Specialist, City of Woodburn
I don’t think it’s ever too early to celebrate Christmas. We can always use an excuse to share a little more joy, especially on cold winter days. In November we knew we wanted our downtown Woodburn to express that festive spirit. Every year the city hires a window painter to add some Christmas cheer to the windows downtown. This year it was up to me to go downtown and let our businesses know we were offering some free window art, Santas, snowflakes, penguins and more!
I find myself going door to door downtown a lot more than I ever expected my quiet kept self to ever do. I’m learning to enjoy meeting the people that make up the community of Woodburn. Woodburn is one of the most diverse communities in Oregon. The Latine community makes up more than 60% of the population in town and many of them have started a business in our downtown core. They own restaurants, variety stores, boot stores, a smoothie shack, cellular providers, grocery stores and more. It feels like a tiny part of Latin America landed in Oregon’s backyard.
Because of the crowd I get to meet, I find myself speaking more and more spanish. It is something special to be able to reconnect with my first language in a professional setting. I’m still not the best at communicating in Spanish, especially since we have so many Latin cultures in Woodburn, each with their own dialect and slang. I’m glad when the shop owners decide to show me some patience with speaking spanish. However sometimes they like to give me a gentle ribbing about some of my spanglish.
Being new to the community and working for the municipal government I expected to find some resistance from the community letting me in but many of the businesses have come to embrace me. I think that they appreciate having a young face with a similar cultural background being part of informing them on some of the services available to them. Sharing these resources with the community is the most rewarding part of my job. Knowing that I am helping some of these family owned businesses set themselves up for opportunities.
These mom and pop shops here in rural communities make up the lifeline of Oregon’s rural towns. So many of them help shape the character of the town. Anytime I go downtown to share some information I always find something catching my eye that I end up buying for myself. There’s always that one candy that I haven’t seen in years that I need to buy. With so many different countries being represented in our stores downtown there is always something new to learn about. At one of our Guatemalan goods market that we have near the plaza, the business owner shared some stories with me about the wonderful festivities that the Mayan communities have and why they wear the shawls full of color that they do.
I am enjoying the small town feel. The rural ecosystem is always feeding back into itself. Local dollars tend to stay local longer with everyone’s can do attitude. There often seems to be a local business for most needs. It is nice to see small shops owned by the community members instead of just long lines of large corporations running most of the commerce in an area.
It’s rewarding to play a role in sustaining the community that has developed in the downtown region of Woodburn. Being able to add a little cohesion to our window decorating downtown adds a little something for our visitors during the cold winter months. It also gives me a good chance to go down and wish people happy holidays during the holiday season.
About the author, Beny Penaloza-Betancourt: Beny is a native Oregonian coming out of Springfield and completed his studies at the University of Oregon. GO Ducks! He is proud to be the son of two immigrant parents from Mexico. Beny feels fortunate to have his education paid for through scholarships like Pathways Oregon and Diversity Excellence Scholarship, and he hopes to give back to the community of Oregon through his service and his career path of working in the public sector. His family has found a magnitude of support through different programs in their community and Beny hopes to continue with similar work to help others who find themselves in need of support and care. Beny studied Economics, Spanish and City Planning during his time at the UO. He is eager to apply what he’s learned out in the world, and he is most excited to begin engaging with the community.
Interested in gaining community and economic development experience of your own? Are you looking for a life changing experience in rural Oregon? Learn more about serving with the RARE AmeriCorps Program. Applications for Year 30 (2023-24) due April 30, 2023 by 11:59pm PDT.