(Ashland, Ore.) – Enrique Morones, the founder of Border Angels, a non-profit organization attempting to prevent migrants from dying as they cross the U S Mexican border, will speak at Southern Oregon University next week. Morones will appear Wednesday, October 20, at 7:00 p.m. in the Rogue River Room of the Stevenson Union. It’s part of Hispanic Heritage Month activities at the university, and this year’s SOU campus theme, “Being Human.”

Since 1986, Border Angels volunteers have been supplying hundreds of rescue stations along the US Mexico border region with water, food and blankets in an ongoing effort to save the lives of migrants crossing the mountains and deserts of the Southwest. Morones contends that ever since a steel wall was built from the Paciific Ocean to California’s Imperial Valley, ten thousand migrants have died while bypassing the wall and attempting to cross into the United States through the desert.

Last year Morones was the first non-Mexican to receive Mexico’s Human Rights Commission Award, presented by President Felipe Calderon. A San Diego native, Morones was also the first two-time President of the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and is a former Vice President of the San Diego Padres baseball team.

Hispanic Heritage Month activities are sponsored on campus by SOU’s Multicultural Resource Center and the Latino Student Union. “Being Human,” SOU’s campus wide theme, is sponsored by the SOU Arts and Humanities Council, the Office of Student Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Provost’s Office.
For more information, contact Marvin Woodard at 541-552-8791 or email to woodardm@sou.edu.