Colibrí Academy for HIV and Language Justice is an in-depth Language Justice Capacity Building and Mentorship program for organizations representing a spectrum of groups and impacted communities, with emphasis placed on QTBIPOC and PWHA-led organizations and programs. Colibrí meets organizations where they are — building on their strengths, priorities, and existing structures — to foster an organizational culture shift towards greater language justice that strengthens relationships between actors in the HIV and Language Justice movements.
Why Colibrí?
Colibrí means hummingbird in Spanish. Hummingbirds serve as critical pollinators within our ecosystems, going from plant to plant sowing the conditions for a possible abundance of blooms in the future. We see the work of Colibrí Academy and its participants as that of cross-pollination within the ecosystem of the movements for HIV and language justice - leading to the blossoming of change within these spaces. With the name Colibrí, we also honor the life and legacy of poz activist and filmmaker, Marco Castro-Bojorquez, for whom the hummingbird was also a resonant image, and appeared in the title of one of his films, “El Canto del Colibrí”, in reference to the seldom heard song of the hummingbird. Marco, whose decades of advocacy for racial and language justice for HIV laid the groundwork for our project’s existence, became an ancestor in June 2021, shortly before he was set to collaborate with us. We seek to honor him and the work that he so passionately carried out during his life with the Colibrí Academy.