By: Isaiah S. Showell, Follow South Jersey Multimedia Journalist/’What’s Good’ Host
BRIDGETON, N.J. — Jamayra Castro is an active community event organizer in Bridgeton, and she’s decided to host a Sip & Paint event at Hopeloft with a bit of a twist that will make the event more affirming.
“I wanted to create a vision board for your relationship,” said Castro. “Whoever your gender partner is, you pick the canvas of your gender partner, and you paint it, and you put words like I am, I pray for, I desire — all the words that you desire in your future person.”
The Sip & Paint is designed to pinpoint what you desire in a potential partner and eliminate having a broad perspective. Castro hosts a weekly event called Euphoria at Hopeloft, a nonprofit network of organizations, programs, and projects dedicated to solving serious social problems and parent organization to Follow South Jersey, as well on Thursdays from 5-9 p.m. for the community’s youth making her love and care for the city of Bridgeton and the youth obvious. Castro put the Sip & Paint event together with the help of relatives in the neighborhood like Maria Rivera and her daughter Jamira Garcia who signed community members in and gave them a blank canvas to paint.
“She’s my favorite cousin,” said Rivera. “Anything she wants to do in the community, she knows I’m there to volunteer. I’m her right-hand man.”
Mocktails were an option made by Dyzaihra Ramos, another relative of Garcia’s, while there was a breakfast style buffet for the community to sink their teeth into. “She wants to see everyone succeed so she tries to make a safe spot for people to open up and have a good time,” said Ramos.
The Sip & Paint event went from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. with community members leaving with a new painting for their home that was made with broad stokes of their paint brush but filled with precise words to complete the artwork, and it was definitely What’s Good in South Jersey this week!
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Follow South Jersey provides local journalism which highlights our diverse communities; fosters transparency through robust, localized, and vital reporting that holds leaders and institutions accountable; addresses critical information needs; supports people in navigating civic life; and equips people with the information necessary to partake in effective community engagement. If there is a story or event you think we should cover, please send your tips to news@followsouthjersey.com with “NEWS” in the subject line.
