M agda Olvera has been the Zumba instructor at Mary Hall Freedom Village for more than five years and has seen many changes! When she first started, her classes were taught inside. When COVID hit, they stopped altogether. But Magda never gave up. She asked Lucy Hall if they could hold classes outside, and the answer was a resounding YES! To this day, she holds her
she faced with participants at Mary Hall Freedom Village. “It was tough. People didn’t want to do it. Or they’d say, ‘I’m shy, I have no rhythm.’” Some weren’t especially kind to her, either. “No one had trained me to work with women in recovery, so I quit.” Lucy stepped in and said something surprising to Magda— “Please stay; you are helping. You are making a difference.”
weekly classes in the parking lot, and her
That’s when Magda made an important discovery about
clients wouldn’t have it any other way. Magda adds, “It’s something COVID made us do, but we love it! If it’s too cold or too hot, we don’t care. We’d rather look at the sky.”
herself. “I realized that I needed to change. And as I changed, my whole class changed too.
Their attitude changed.” Up to this point some women had told Magda they couldn’t walk, and that was the end of it. “Now they come and dance in their wheelchair. I teach them how. If they are
After Magda was trained to be a Zumba instructor, she taught around the area, but wasn’t quite prepared for the unique challenges
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