In Ashland the students presented their findings to four nonprofit enterprises: the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Talent Maker City, the Institute for Applied Sustainability and Film Southern Oregon.
Ashland and Guanajuato have been sister cities for 55 years. They’ve sent delegations each year to Ashland’s Independence Day celebrations except for those of 2020 and 2021, curtailed at the height of the COVID pandemic.
The Ashland Amigo Club, supporter of the Ashland-Guanajuato alliance since its beginning, reports 16 University of Guanajuato students have come to Ashland this year to work on projects with their university student counterparts.
Entre Amigos: The annual Amigo Club dinner/fundraiser on Dec. 2, the sixth overall and first after a three-year forced suspension, grossed some $15,000 in donations.
Entre Amigos: The Ashland Amigo Club will offer the community its sixth annual Guanajuato Nights dinner and auction to raise funds for University of Guanajuato and Southern Oregon University exchange student scholarships. The fundraiser will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2, in the Rogue River Room of the Stevenson Union building on the SOU campus.
Entre Amigos: Sister City Guanajuato sent a delegation to continue its participation in Ashland’s Fourth of July parade and festivities this year.
Entre Amigos: Two professors and nine business administration students from the University of Guanajuato arrived in Ashland Saturday for a week of collaboration with SOU students, analyzing and evaluating three small businesses in the Ashland area.
The Ashland Amigo Club has selected two Guanajuato scholarship recipients who will study winter and spring terms at Southern Oregon University as part of its Amistad student exchange program with the University of Guanajuato.
Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and his wife, Frances “Faffie” Siekman, who will receive Southern Oregon University’s prestigious President’s Medal next week, have connections with the university and Ashland dating back 44 years. Romero Hicks campaigned unsuccessfully to be president of Mexico in 2018 and is seeking his party’s backing again for the 2024 elections.
Entre Amigos: Sister City Guanajuato, Mexico, sent its summer festival queen and five other representatives to Ashland to participate in Ashland Fourth of July celebrations, resuming a 50-year tradition derailed in 2020 and 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A six-acre, 1.4 megawatt (MW) solar energy development proposal just outside the north end of Ashland on the east side of Highway 99 is set for public hearing at the county on Monday, Dec. 1. The proposed project on one parcel of a much larger area owned by Medella Bison Ranch, was initially denied approval by county planning staff based primarily on impacts to agricultural lands.
Eighty volunteers prepared and distributed approximately 300 meals on Thursday for the 10th annual Thanksgiving Community Peace Meal organized by Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice. This year’s gathering was the largest yet, with meal deliveries doubling compared to last year.
State employees packed boxes of food to be distributed throughout the state to help low-income Oregonians. But it’s not just to give out immediate food aid, it’s an exercise the Office of Resilience and Emergency Management will use to prepare agencies to help respond to major emergencies.
Oregon is co-leading a group of Democratic attorneys general in suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its leader Brooke Rollins over abrupt cuts to food assistance for refugees and asylum seekers. The cuts could affect up to 3,000 Oregonians who rely on SNAP.
Herbert Rothschild: We aren’t appreciably safer now than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What else can we conclude but that nuclear policy simply mustn’t be left in the hands of the warmakers? Either we give peace a chance or we continue to chance self-immolation.
Despite early forecasts of a punishing 2025 wildfire season, Oregon escaped relatively unscathed. Less than 400,000 acres burned in 2025, only one-fifth of the 2 million acres ravaged the year before and well below the 10-year average of 680,000.
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