Events

Throughout the year, CASA Purchase hosts many events for the campus community. Please read on below to find out more about our past and upcoming events.

  • 2014 Assembly of Westchester: Working with Immigrants

    More than 60 participants representing non-profit service providers and advocates working with the Westchester immigrant community were in attendance at a meeting hosted by Casa Purchase. Among the topics discussed were the executive actions of the Obama administration to provide immigration relief.

    2014 Assembly of Westchester: Working with Immigrants 2014 Assembly of Westchester: Working with Immigrants

  • Don Bosco Center Kids at Purchase College

    It didn’t take long for the school kids to decide: They were going to go to Purchase College.

    Twenty-six children from the Don Bosco Community Center in Port Chester visited the college on Oct. 25. On the bus ride to the SUNY campus, adult chaperones from the center talked with the children about what college is. Many were unfamiliar with college, and the bulk   had never been to one.

    But after a brief tour of the campus and the library, a pair of students came to a decision over lunch in the Dining Hall.

    “I’m going to Purchase!” said Kaylee Cruz, 9. “So am I,” her friend Olga Carcamo, 8, said.

    Leandro Benmergui, director of Casa Purchase, an Outreach Center for Latin American Studies, had arranged the visit. He asked the girls when they wanted to start.

    “Next semester?” Kaylee said optimistically.

    “I think it’s fair to say our kids left with dreams of ‘Early Decision’ to SUNY Purchase and the more general vision of college in their futures,” said Don Bosco’s Ann Heekin, one of five chaperones on the trip.

    At the Library, students were impressed by the range of materials that Library Director Pat Callahan described. Books, 4,000 films, 8,000 music CDs, computer labs, sound mixing studios and even a comic book collection. The kids enjoyed looking through the library’s vast collection of books on art.

    After lunch the Don Bosco kids visited the  Neuberger Museum of Art, for most, their first visit to an art museum. Docents led the kids through discussions of several paintings in the  collection. Standing in front of a Jackson Pollock, one boy said he’d seen a book about the artist. He had, earlier that day at the Library.

    At the end of the visit, Ross Daly, chair of the School of Humanities, told the group that Kaylee and Olga had decided they were future Purchase students.

    “Does anyone else want to go to Purchase?” Twenty-six hands shot up in the air. “Of course, you can go to any college you want. It doesn’t have to be Purchase,” Daly said.

    One very young boy leaned over to his friend and said softly, “Not me. I’m going to Purchase.”

    Docent Nancy Drain explains Jackson Pollock's painting techniques to kids from the Don Bosco center and to Leandro Benmergui, director of... Docent Nancy Drain explains Jackson Pollock's painting techniques to kids from the Don Bosco center and to Leandro Benmergui, director of Casa Purchase.
    Olga Carcamo, left, and Kaylee Cruz, say they want to be Purchase students Olga Carcamo, left, and Kaylee Cruz, say they want to be Purchase students Jordin Faison, 7, From Port Chester examines and art book in the Library. Director Patrick Callahan leads a tour of the Purchase Library Director Patrick Callahan leads a tour of the Purchase Library

Other Past Events at CASA Purchase

September 2021, Puerto Rico, Caribbean, Mexico Earthquake Relief Collection Donation Site

September 2021, Quienes Somos? The Latinx Identity at Purchase/ Latinx Alumni Network

August 2021, Aquarius: Class, Race, and Gentrification in Northeastern Brazil with guest speaker Dr. Paula Halperin

July 2021, A Musical Journey through Latin America with Emiliano Messiez

July 2021, Visiting Ouro Preto, the first Brazilian World’s Heritage Site, with Architect and Historian Fernando Atique

July 2021, Memory, Indigenous Past, and Dictatorship in Chile

July 2021, An American in Buenos Aires: A Conversation with Christine Brebes

July 2021, Los Sures: Puerto Rican New York and the Gentrification of the City

August 2020, Being Young, Gifted, Black (Gay and Poor) in Brazil

August 2020, This is How You Lose Her: Simultaneity and Identity in Junot Diaz’s Stories

July 2020, Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Summer Series: Negotiating Latinx LGBTQ, Making America Great Again? Immigration and Border Anxiety; Tango, Diasporas, and Encounters with Flor Argento, Milongueros and The Culture of Transgression with Flor Argento

April 2020, Master Class and Screening with Tango Dancer, Flor Argento 

March 2020, In Conversation: Pasolini, the Cold War, and the Third World

April 2018, Transmedia Oral History Project: Immigrant Histories of Westchester

October 2017, Telling Our Stories

October 2017, Between Israel and Argentine: Youth, Gender, and Politics 1950-70

September 2017, Information and DACA Renewal Workshop: Know Your Rights

December 2016, CASA Purchase Internship Event at the Multicultural Center

December 2016, Oral History Transmedia Project Exhibition at the Multicultural Center

November 2016, Immigrant Empowerment Workshop. Free legal consults with The Westchester Hispanic Coalition’s Immigration attorney.

October 2016, Latino Americans, 500 Years of History, Screening of Bless Me Ultima. Paula Halpern Professor of History and Cinema Studies at Purchase College, discusses the film in context of how Latinos are portrayed in films.

April 2016, Clay Art Center, Port Chester Melting Pots, www.clayartcenter.org

2016, Summer Assembly- Westchester Working with Immigrants, NY Immigration Coalition

October 2015, Screening of the film Bless Me Ultima

Fall 2015, Latino American Series:  Lectures on New Latinos, Latino Migration to the US, Latino Films and Popular Culture

April 2015, Professor John Gitlitz discusses The Tension between Law and Custom: Child Marriage in the Peruvian Andes.