Members of the Emerson community are making their way across the country in an effort to humanize the immigrant experience.

Continuing the two-year-long endeavor Proyecto Carrito, a cross-country trip in a van literally wrapped in the text of the immigrant stories of its members, co-directors Tamera Marko, an Emerson professor; and Ryan Catalani, an Emerson alumnus and former Beacon editor-in-chief, are traveling with Emerson maintenance worker Mario Ernesto Osorio to promote his immigrant story.

“I think it’s a very beautiful time because my story is about immigration and education,” Ernesto Osorio said on the phone, from a coffee shop in Denver. “I think in this moment, all problems with immigration is a big connection with education.”

The three are about halfway through their weeks-long, 4,500-mile trip from Boston, through Colorado, to California, but they won’t stop there.

The group will finish their trek by looping back to Kentucky, where they’ll meet with Maria Portillo, another Emerson maintenance worker, to present at the Thomas R. Watson conference on rhetoric and composition at the University of Louisville from Oct. 20–22.