Children were the focus of a special celebration Saturday afternoon as the Aurora Hispanic Heritage Advisory Board offered its annual Dia del Nino event at West Aurora High School.
First established in Mexico back in the 1920s, Dia del Nino is normally celebrated with festivities, gifts and activities.
Zayra Chaves, chair of the Aurora Hispanic Heritage Advisory Board, said it “is basically the Day of the Children.”
“A lot of different nations celebrate the Day of the Children. Mexico, in particular, celebrates this event,” she said. “We’ve kind of modeled our event on the Mexican tradition of celebrating at the end of April but we had to move ours up a few weeks because of location. The high school has a tournament next weekend so we had to move our event up.”
Children need to be celebrated, she said, “but this is also a way to get the community together and provide resources.”
“This bridges some gaps in the community and allows us to give back and lets parents know we’re there to support them in any way we can,” she said.
A food truck was on hand Saturday and the event also included book giveaways and live entertainment.
“We also have over 20 community organizations and non-profits here ready to provide all the other information parents need,” Chaves said. “We’ve partnered with schools and other organizations like the police and fire department, the Neighbor Project and many others.”
Angelica Amoni and her husband Ethan and two children Ariana, 3, and Penelope, 5, of Aurora said it was their first time attending the annual event in Aurora.
“It’s fun, I told my kids today is the Day of the Children. I enjoyed many things including the free books. My kids are bilingual so that was a nice thing,” Angelica Amoni said.
“We’ve been here almost two hours. We’ve definitely made it worth our while,” she said at the fest.
Ethan Amoni said the resources at the event “are great. There were a lot of them we weren’t aware of in the city of Aurora.”
Melissa Sosa of Aurora said she has come at least five times to the event over the years.
“It’s very culturally diverse and it brings the East and the West side of town together and you see a lot of different families that come to enjoy a lot of different activities and there are a lot of resources for families to learn about,” she said.
Sosa said celebrating children is a great thing to do.
“It’s important … because they are the ones who are eventually going to change this world,” Sosa said.
Gio Santana of Aurora brought his son Niko, 1, to the event and said he wanted “to come out and support this.”
“We were running errands in the area and decided to come over and check it out,” Santana said. “We wanted to bring Niko by even though he’s young. He likes music and will listen to some of that.
“A day to celebrate children is important,” he said. “They’re our future and you can’t celebrate them enough.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
