Voices & Dreams Live (Voces y Sueños en Vivo)
media release: Midwest Mujeres Inc. will bring women’s voices to the stage this fall for Voices & Dreams Live | Voces y Sueños en Vivo, the culminating community event of the 2026 Voices & Dreams Academy, on Sunday, November 1, 2026, at the Goodman Community Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
This is Midwest Mujeres' annual storytelling event!
This year’s theme, The American Dream: Atravez de Los Ojos de Mujeres| Through the Eyes of Women, asks a powerful question: What does the American Dream look like through the eyes of women from the Americas?
Through personal storytelling, women will share lived experiences of work, family, entrepreneurship, migration, identity, economic survival, resilience, and the dreams they are building for themselves and their communities. Storytelling is an art, and Midwest Mujeres Inc. gives our working women time and space to dive deeper.
“For years, we have said that our stories have value. This year, we are asking women to tell us what the American Dream actually looks like through their eyes,” says Araceli Esparza, founder and executive director of Midwest Mujeres Inc. “These women are not statistics. They are workers, mothers, entrepreneurs, leaders, artists, and dreamers. When we give women the tools and the space to tell their own stories, we begin to understand economic opportunity in a completely different way.”
In 2026, Midwest Mujeres expands that conversation through Voices & Dreams Academy, a leadership, workforce development, and storytelling program that helps women build confidence, develop their voices, strengthen professional and entrepreneurial skills, and turn lived experience into leadership.
Throughout the Academy, participants work alongside coaches, mentors, and community leaders to develop their stories and prepare to share them publicly. The November 1 event is more than a graduation. It is an opportunity for the wider community to witness what happens when women are given space to define success for themselves.
Voices & Dreams Live | Voces y Sueños en Vivo will feature stories from first-generation Latina, Black, and other women from our communities whose lives reflect both the barriers and possibilities behind the idea of the American Dream.
Their stories explore not only where they have been, but where they are going.
What does it mean to earn? To belong? To build something of your own? To start again? To create opportunities for your children? To dream when the traditional American Dream was never designed with your experience in mind?
Midwest Mujeres invites community members, employers, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, educators, families, and supporters to join us on November 1 to listen, connect, and celebrate these women.
Because when women have the confidence and opportunity to tell their stories, their voices can become strategies, their experiences can become leadership, and their dreams can create change.
Sunday, November 1, 2026, Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53704
ABOUT MIDWEST MUJERES INC.
Midwest Mujeres Inc. is a Madison-based nonprofit organization working to reduce poverty and income inequality by creating educational, leadership, storytelling, and economic-development opportunities for women, particularly first-generation Latina and Black women.
Through programs such as Voices & Dreams Academy, Midwest Mujeres creates spaces where women can build confidence, strengthen their professional and entrepreneurial skills, develop their stories, and connect with the people and resources that can help move their dreams forward.
We educate. We connect. We amplify. Women transform. Communities thrive.
