Hannah Shinew sat with her laptop in her home in Champaign, Illinois, watching the many faces of Latina girls she met in Columbus just before spring break.

As part of her Spanish in Ohio service learning course, Shinew has to complete 70 hours engaging in Spanish, 50 of which must be spent working directly with the Latina/o community.

Shinew and several of her peers in the class volunteered to work with Proyecto Mariposas (“Butterfly Project”), a leadership and empowerment program for Latina girls and their mothers. She had been working on the group’s social media as well as developing its monthly newsletters: a Spanish one for women and an English one for the girls. She was gearing up for more work with the program after break, including planning the weekly meetings and preparing a session for a spring conference with community members.

But when Ohio State moved to virtual courses in response to the coronavirus outbreak, the program’s founder, Yahaira Rose ’99, shifted quickly so Shinew and other volunteers could continue their service projects with Proyecto Mariposas.

“When Ohio State went virtual, (Rose) was the first person I heard from saying that we were going to work this out,” said Shinew, a senior who is double majoring in Spanish and public affairs.

For a program that serves 100 Latina women and girls in Columbus, it was important to maintain the connection with Ohio State volunteers, said Rose, who launched the program in 2011.

“This is one group that I really count on,” she said.

The program is focused on bringing Latina mothers and daughters together to learn, develop and foster Latina culture through programs and enriching activities.

“As Latina girls grow into women, they start separating themselves from our culture,” Rose said. “A lot of the girls are born here while their parents are from different backgrounds. This program is teaching girls about embracing who you are and the Latina within you.”

Elena Foulis, who teaches Spanish in Ohio, said the switch to virtual classes has posed challenges for some students to continue service projects with their community organization, but Proyecto Mariposas has been an example of a partner that has been able to remain engaged with students.

Initially, this year’s group of volunteers was slated to organize and run Proyecto Mariposas’ March conference focused on cultural identity. The volunteers were also assigned to lead separate group meetings with the girls and their mothers and work on curricula for upcoming summer camps and other cultural activities.

Rose has reorganized the work for the five Ohio State volunteers so they are now responsible for projects such as translating materials into Spanish, creating positivity bracelets and putting together activity boxes for girls.

While nearly 300 miles away, Shinew continues her work with the program, creating content for the program’s social media platforms and sending out newsletters. She will soon lead the check-in meetings with mothers and daughters via video conferencing. After developing a diversity program to share with girls at Proyecto Mariposas’ spring conference, she plans to create a binder of all the information she gathered for future use.

She said the Spanish in Ohio course has helped her connect with the local Latina/o community and suggests it should be a required course for Spanish students early in their college careers.

“Even though studying abroad is great for the development of language and appreciation of culture, the reality is most of us will be using our Spanish with the Latino community here in the United States,” she said. “I think it would be incredibly valuable to Spanish students and the Columbus community as a whole to foster that relationship earlier on.”