Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/765213
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 MACON MAGAZINE | 35 coordinator for Stations of Hope, a program created to challenge both faith-based and civic organizations to step up and offer resources and guidance to citizens impacted by the criminal justice system. "If someone gets out of prison and returns to the same environment they left without any support or resources, what do you expect is going to happen?" Wilder asked. "This program offers educational services, help with housing, help with finding a job – they help make it so that this person isn't a returning inmate, they're a returning citizen with a future." The future is bright for Pilar Wilder – of course it is; how could it not be, when everything about her exudes joy and purpose and the peaceful grace of being exactly where you're meant to be in life? Hayiya Dance Theatre will have a new, larger home in Payne City come Jan. 1. Wilder's sad to leave the old Vineville Avenue space – "Sometimes when new students come in, they ask me 'You live here?' and that makes me feel like I'm doing something right, if the studio feels like a home" – but she's excited to have three times the space, and to be able to expand the vision and the footprint of Hayiya. In addition to everything else – the full-time job at Westside, the evenings spent teaching and running her dance studio, the community volunteer work, the weekend trips to proudly watch former students perform – Wilder is currently enrolled in the Master's of Dance Education program at UNC-Greensboro. "I'm constantly looking for new things to teach, so I'm constantly learning," she said. "Trying new things makes me brave, and you have to be brave to teach – theoretically and also physically – so I grow a little bit every single day." Pilar Wilder's students perform in front of The Tubman African American Museum Maryann Bates for the Peyton Anderson Foundation