Midwest Mujeres Inc. will mark the fifth anniversary of Voices & Dreams Live/Voces y Sueños en Vivo on Sunday, Nov. 1, with eight women sharing stories about the American Dream at the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s East Side. The event comes as the nonprofit closes out its 2026 Voices & Dreams Academy and asks the community to take part in the room where those stories are told.
Araceli Esparza, the group’s founder and executive director, said the event was built around a deliberate mix of voices: “What I felt necessary was to really curate these stories of different women coming from different walks of life,” she said. Gabriela Parra, a Milwaukee-based immigration attorney, will serve as keynote speaker, and Esparza said, “Gabriela has an amazing and inspiring life story,” adding, “We look forward to hearing from her.”
Voices & Dreams Academy
The Nov. 1 program will bring together the 15 academy participants who took part in this year’s Voices & Dreams Academy, a leadership, workforce development and storytelling program led by Esparza. Participants worked with coaches, mentors and community leaders before sharing their stories publicly, and this year’s group received individual coaching, mentorship, professional headshots, networking opportunities and free blogs with search engine optimization support.
Esparza said the program is open to a wider range of women than many people assume. “You don’t have to have a career to be part of our group,” she said. “A lot of people think they have to be completely Spanish speakers or English speakers, or they can only be women, or they can only be immigrants,” she said. “No, this program has been and continues to be open and powered by community demand.”
Madison East Side gathering
Midwest Mujeres invites community members, employers, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, educators and families to attend the event, and registration is free. Admission is pay-what-you-can, with tickets listed at $15, and Esparza said attendees who cannot pay will not be turned away. Community members may also attend without paying at the door. Esparza said, “This is a great opportunity for people to come over after church and have community with us.”
This year’s anniversary falls on Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday honoring deceased loved ones, and Esparza hopes attendees will bring photographs of the people they are remembering. That setting gives the event a wider reach than a stage program: it pairs public storytelling with a community gathering that invites families to show up with memory, not just an audience seat.
Funding for weekly meals
The celebration sits beside a recurring strain inside the academy. Esparza said, “The hardest challenge that we have every year with our academy is getting enough funding for the hot meal that we provide every week and the childcare,” and added, “It’s a struggle to keep those things afloat.”
That leaves the program balancing two jobs at once: presenting women’s stories in public while keeping the weekly support that makes participation possible. The unanswered question is how much more money Midwest Mujeres still needs to cover those meals and childcare as the academy continues its work.
