Built on community partnerships, FERIA Conference makes a difference for local families

As Melina Melgarejo looked across a room at Chula Vista’s Otay Ranch High School on Oct. 18, she felt a deep sense of satisfaction. 

Some 300 attendees — most of them Spanish-speaking parents and guardians of students with disabilities — attended the 11th Annual FERIA Partnership Conference, which was themed “Empowering Change Agents for a Resilient Future.”

“Parents feel a true sense of belonging there,” said Melgarejo, an assistant professor at San Diego State University. “These families don’t have many spaces where they feel they can be themselves, speak their language or be in community with families that are going through the same thing they are.”

Melgarejo, who is faculty in both SDSU’s Department of Special Education and Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education, co-coordinated the conference for the first time along with former colleague Ana Dueñas. 

They were carrying on an important legacy started more than a decade ago by SDSU alumni Jose and Rebecca Sapien-Melchor and professor emeritus Alberto Ochoa. Their brainchild was FERIA, a conference dedicated to helping Latinx and Spanish-speaking families with children in special education gain access and greater understanding of how best to access information, resources and services.

“These are families that have traditionally felt left out of service systems,” Melgarejo explained. “Specifically with special education and the disability systems, there's a real shortage of culturally and linguistically responsive resources for Spanish-speaking families. And we know that families face all these barriers — language differences, trust in institutions — that make it difficult for families to be able to engage in their child’s education and in the services that they receive. 

“FERIA's mission is to give families direct access to experts in the field and to community agencies.”

FERIA workshops — offered primarily in Spanish with English translation available — included topics such as advocacy and assistive technology, as well as sessions broken out by children's ages. Parents of young children could explore the intricacies of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Parents of teens or young adults could attend a workshop offering information on sexuality — a topic that had been requested by past attendees.

The conference also offered families the chance to explore a resource fair with more than 40 local and statewide organizations offering disability services and supports.

Strong partnerships have made FERIA a long-running success, including those from local disability agencies and the Interwork Institute’s Exceptional Family Resource Center. Chula Vista Elementary School District and Sweetwater Union High School District also play a key outreach role, providing scholarships for parents of their students to attend.

"One thing I think that’s really cool about FERIA is that it’s a community collaborative effort,” Melgarejo said.