Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off with a story walk

Event was held at Sunset Neighborhood Park in Spanish and English.

By Joshua Solorzano • September 19, 2024 11:30 am

Sunset Neighborhood Park was filled with kids reading stories along with music, food and educational content from the King County Library System and Puget Sound Energy on Sept. 14 as part of a bilingual story walk.

To preemptively celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2024, PSE and the KCLS, in partnership with the Renton Parks and Recreation Department, held a story walk at the park with both English and Spanish versions of “The Wild” by Yuval Zommer posted around the park.

In addition to the story walk, Puget Sound Energy talked to families about their 2045 clean energy goal, the KCLS crew gave out free books in Spanish and bilingual English and Spanish books, and there were free tacos.

Renton City Councilmember Valerie O’Halloran said the event promoted literacy and health through walking, exercise, community and Renton parks. She added that the story walk event was a pre-celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month that Renton has done in collaboration with KCLS since 2021, and the story walk will be at the park until Oct. 14.

“I’m delighted to welcome Puget Sound Energy as our latest partner in showcasing today’s story walk, which is featuring the book ‘The Wild’ by Yuval Zommer, which is available in both English and Spanish,” O’Halloran said. “The story focuses on how we can all work together to protect the planet, which aligns with our city’s commitment for environmental sustainability.”

According to the city, Renton is the 16th most diverse city in the nation, with Spanish as one of the top five foreign languages spoken in the city, and Hispanic residents comprising 15% of the population.

Jessica McColgin, PSE’s manager of customer and community engagement, said this event was the first time they attempted to engage the community through telling families about their clean energy goal for Washington state to have 100% clean electricity. She said she believes people want to learn about their goal, so they want to make it easy for them by meeting them where they’re at.

McColgin said she the story walk was a fun way to link books about energy efficiency and engage the Hispanic community. McColgin is fluent in Spanish, so she can speak to families who prefer to talk in Spanish. McColgin said when families learn that she speaks Spanish, their faces light up because it’s easier for them to communicate with her, or they prefer speaking in their native tongue.

“We identified communities that are kind of more underserved. We looked at different kinds of data to see where there are higher energy burdens, meaning people who have higher energy bills compared to their income. And so we’re trying to find those communities and then look at what are some of those barriers to participate and then trying to see how can we overcome those barriers,” McColgin said.