Over the course of the 2025 – 2026 academic year, the Ascentria Unaccompanied Children Long-Term Foster Care (UC LTFC) Program had the opportunity to develop two photo-based projects titled Imaginarte alongside student volunteers from Assumption University.
Thanks to ASOST grant funding secured through the United Way of Central Massachusetts, youth were invited to define and reflect on their adjustment to living in the United States. Both projects were led by Assumption University Professor Esteban Loustaunau, who has been a long-time partner of the Ascentria UC LTFC program in working on a multitude of initiatives over time to creatively meet program needs by utilizing Assumption’s Community Service Learning curriculum.
Imaginarte is a play on words that ties together the Spanish words for imagination and art, and is also the Spanish word for self-imagination. As newcomers to the United States, the Ascentria youth often experience a reinvention of their identity, culture, and sense of belonging to family and place.
Rather than labeling the teens as refugees or immigrants, we asked them how they see themselves today. Together, they described themselves as brave, resilient, artistic, valued, and empowered. As a way to honor their collective identity, the Fall semester exhibition is titled Imaginarte: Views of Life by BRAVE Youth.
The project is a collaboration between a group of Ascentria youth and students in the community service learning (CSL) course LAS 210 Routes and Roots: Latin American Migration at Assumption University. Over the course of several weeks, participants engaged in meaningful conversations about adapting to life in the United States. These conversations often led to discussions about school, hobbies, past times, and future plans.
Most importantly, the Ascentria youth and Assumption students learned about each other’s ways of looking at life from various perspectives. The college students asked each youth to consider thinking about changes in their lives, not through words but through photographs.
These encounters resulted in a photography exhibition that includes some of the youths’ photographs and the college students’ transcriptions of the descriptions and stories as told by each Ascentria youth. This is a collaborative project that seeks to convey some of the complexities of identity and belonging —including being open to new experiences while retaining one’s own cultural roots and memory.
To symbolize these fragile but lasting connections, participants decided to link each of the youth’s photographs to their country of origin using with a unique colored string. To protect their anonymity, each individual chose their own artistic name.
During the Spring 2026 semester, Ascentria youth worked closely with another Assumption University CSL course SPA 204: Literature and Interpretation. The project took shape over the course of several weeks as the Ascentria youth and Assumption students responded to reflections and engaged in thoughtful discussion led by Professor Loustaunau.
The final project, titled Dos Mundos: Caminando juntos hacia nuevos futuros (Two Worlds: Walking Together to New Futures) combines written words, drawings and photos that center each youth’s voice and experiences. Youth reflected about living between ‘two worlds’, comparing their lives in the United States with their lives in their countries of origin while seeking ways to highlight commonalities across experiences and cultural identities. The work embodies a key component of the social work field, by incorporating a strength-based approach throughout each activity while centering an understanding of community.
