2002 Celebration
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2002 Celebration |
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Programs ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program (APEX) Program Descriptions ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program (APEX) Contacts: The ASPIRA Association, Inc., founded in 1961, was the first nonprofit organization in the country dedicated to encouraging educational and leadership development among Latino youth. Called the ASPIRA Process, its intervention model consciously accentuates the positive, focusing on developing the potential of Aspirantes (students and adults involved in the ASPIRA Process) rather than on overcoming perceived deficits. Realizing that the role of parental involvement is critical to achieving ASPIRA’s goal of empowering the Latino community through leadership development, the ASPIRA Parents for Educational Excellence Program (APEX) was established in 1992. The APEX program’s mission is to increase Latino parents’ involvement in their children’s education by educating them on the intricacies of negotiating change and improving education in their communities. The program has two components: the APEX Workshop Series and one-on-one technical assistance. The workshops help children improve their study habits and self-esteem, improve communication and leadership skills in the home and community, and better understand school structure, group dynamics, and parents’ rights. The curriculum is printed in Spanish and English. Technical assistance is provided for parents on an as needed, one-on-one basis. With the increased awareness of educational issues and support offered through APEX, parents have a base from which to begin advocating for their children and their community. Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center, Inc. Contact The mission of Calvary Bilingual Multicultural Learning Center is to provide safe, nurturing, excellent care and education for children of low- and moderate-income working families, in an environment conducive to the full development of the racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse children who attend. The Family Institute supports the family in a community of learning that nurtures their investment in the development and education of their children. The center seeks to transform the language diversity of its constituent community into a dual-language learning experience for English speakers as well as immigrant and U.S.-born Spanish speakers. Embracing language—not only as a means of oral communication but also as an expression of culture manifested in gesture, intonation, movement, and expression—permits the integration of language and culture into educational and training methodologies and curricula. Through its Family Institute component, the center provides counseling, referral, intervention, health screening, play therapy, a parents’ association, and parenting workshops. Working with the D.C. school system, the center eases the transition to the public school environment, providing a familiar environment for continued Latino family involvement. The Healthy Families D.C. program includes home visitation, information and referral, and information to parents about guidance and child development. Collaborative efforts with other community-based organizations, businesses, and public agencies minimize duplication of effort and maximize the benefits of local resources. Latin American Youth Center Contact Established in 1969, the Latin American Youth Center is a nonprofit multicultural organization that promotes the individual, social, and economic development of Latinos and other minority groups. The seeds of the program were planted between 1968 and 1974 when many young immigrants from Central America arrived in Washington, D.C. The youth began gathering in Mount Pleasant and soon saw the need to organize structured recreational and educational programs. Today the center is the only comprehensive service delivery organization for Latinos and other multicultural youth and families in the Washington, D.C., area. The center’s mission is to identify unfulfilled community needs and develop, implement, and/or advocate on behalf of long-term solutions that offer multicultural community residents options and hope for the future. The center offers skills training, job skills development and placement, educational programs, crisis counseling, teen pregnancy prevention, drug treatment, residential programs, health, HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention, teen health promotion, leadership development, violence prevention, gang diversion, and recreational programs. In addition, an art, music, and theater program provides a multidisciplinary forum for young people. In Columbia Heights YouthBuild, the center’s most recent program, 30 participants earn their GED, develop effective leadership skills, and gain valuable hands-on construction skills. Participants renovated their own office space and have also helped renovate public housing units in the Columbia Heights area. The HIV/AIDS Outreach program disseminates materials and conducts HIV/AIDS prevention workshops with youth at community centers. The AmeriCorps school-based program, MANY, provides an after-school and summer program focusing on educational enrichment. National Hermanitas Program Contact: The National Hermanitas Program is the only national program whose sole purpose is the positive development of Latina girls. The program, which is offered through MANA, A National Latina Organization, was developed in 1986 as a stay-in-school program focusing on personal development, self-esteem, career exploration, and educational opportunities. It was started to address the unmet career and college counseling needs of high school Latinas. Today, National Hermanitas has evolved to a comprehensive approach for empowering Latinas through education, leadership development, health, cultural awareness, and community action. Through the program, MANA prepares participants to become well-educated, healthy, self-confident community leaders by increasing consciousness and prevention of substance abuse, and by promoting educational values through advanced education planning, exposure to career paths, and good study habits. Through the National Hermanitas Summer Institute, a three- to four-day leadership development conference, participants develop leadership skills, decision-making and goal-setting strategies, healthy living strategies, and community action and advocacy skills. Approximately 120 Latina middle school and high school students from around the country participate each year in the institute, which includes interactive workshops, reflections and inspirational journal writing, and interaction with successful Latina leaders. Six months later, MANA conducts a follow-up assessment of the institute’s impact on participants’ lives. The program’s primary focus is a strong mentoring component in which young Latinas are paired with successful, dedicated Latinas—many of whom are members of MANA. Role models provide the girls with a positive vision of their own futures and encourage them to work hard to succeed in school and plan for higher education. In addition, through a grant from SAMSHA, MANA is conducting the first national pilot study of the program’s effectiveness in combating substance abuse. Because little data has been collected on Latina girls in the United States, the study will provide some insight into the best practices for and needs of Latinas. The study focuses on a comprehensive curriculum MANA has developed, consisting of monthly seminars about health choices, education, juvenile justice, and substance abuse avoidance; a mentor that provides 104 contact hours per year with her Hermanita; 6 leadership skills trainings per year; cultural events and sports and physical activity events; 50 community service hours a year promoting civic involvement in the Latino community; and a Reading for Knowledge and for Pleasure Program, which requires participants to read a book every two months and attend a discussion about the books. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Institute Contact: The primary purpose of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Institute, or STEM, is to prepare Latinos and other underrepresented minority precollege students, both academically and psychologically, to enroll in and succeed in the nation’s top science and engineering schools. The summer-long program motivates and nurtures students to achieve their full potential by providing them with rigorous, intensive exposure to college-level courses in engineering, mathematics, the physical sciences, and computer science—with an emphasis on abstract problem solving and critical thinking. The Center for the Advancement of Hispanics in Science and Engineering Education, or CAHSEE, which implements STEM, is the result of a decade of concerted efforts to increase the number of Latinos in the fields of science, engineering, and mathematics. One hundred percent of the staff are bilingual. STEM—with its focus on academic rigor—is a rebuttal to the prevailing hypothesis that underserved children can only participate in short-term, remedial, hands-on programs, as opposed to in-depth, “minds-on” programs that require a higher level of commitment, creativity, critical thinking, and academic discipline. Middle and high school students are grouped into five levels based on their background knowledge and academic achievement. Upon completion of a level, students may return to the institute in successive summers for the next level of coursework in areas such as algebra, elementary topology, physics, chemistry, vector mechanics, probability and statistics, calculus, modern physics, C programming, vector-based analytic geometry, and neuroscience. The institute also offers workshops for students and parents on planning for college, choosing a school and a major, SAT preparation, financial aid, and the college application process. Staff members assist in writing letters of recommendation on behalf of students for colleges and scholarships. Instructors are undergraduate and graduate Latino students who are pursuing degrees in science, math, and engineering. They are among the top students in their fields and have a commitment to mentoring younger students who strive to be in their place. Beyond the academic material, instructors are able to answer questions about how they made it to college or graduate school and talk specifically about the Latino experience. Talleres de la Frontera Contact Talleres de la Frontera is part of the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution that promotes the understanding of diverse contemporary grassroots cultures in the United States and the world. The program and its companion materials transcend the border location, allowing students and teachers to examine other types of borders that impact their experiences. The program is designed to increase understanding of the complexities of culture along the U.S.-Mexico border; to facilitate productive discussion about identity between students, educators, border artists, craftspeople, performers, and scholars; to foster an interest among border residents and explore how the border has shaped their experiences and identities; and to offer a model for presenting workshops introducing local artists and traditional practitioners in the classroom or in cultural programs. The program provides a quality bilingual education product that challenges young people to think creatively through readings, hands-on activities, video, and illustrations. It also introduces students and teachers to ethnographic investigation methods used by folklorists and anthropologists to explore living culture. It shows how traditional culture bearers (singers, storytellers, artisans, vaqueros, etc.) can interact with students, thus extending the classroom into the community. In 1993, the culture of the U.S.-Mexico border was featured at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The weeklong living exhibit—the result of a year’s research by folklorists, anthropologists, historians, and local cultural experts—brought 80 traditional culture bearers to perform, demonstrate, and discuss their culture. By the end of the program, there was a rich body of material to draw from in producing an educational kit. In keeping with the center’s philosophy of returning cultural resources to the community, the kit and workshop series were developed. During the workshop series, which took place at nine locations along the border, 400 free educational kits were distributed and are being used in area schools. The Identidad y Fronteras/Borders and Identity kit includes chapters on the concepts of borders and identity, a video, an appendix, and a cultural map. The workshops were carried out using a combination of English and Spanish; introducing native languages such as Mixteco, Pai Pai, and Tohono O’odham; and discussing language phenomena such as Spanglish and Chicanismos. The program helped emphasize how important language is to culture along the border. Today, Talleres de la Frontera is comprised of a workshop series, a performance series, a bilingual educational kit, and a follow-up workshop. The workshops use the kit materials in conjunction with presentations and performances by culture bearers to demonstrate how community culture can be used as resources in schools. Educators, scholars, and the tradition bearers engage students in discussions that include borderlands history, traditional occupations, belief systems, and expressive arts on the border. Students talk to traditional artists as they demonstrate their craft, and they try their own hand at creating the artworks. DC-Barrios Unidos Contact DC-Barrios Unidos is the Washington chapter of the National Coalition of Barrios Unidos (NCBU). DC-Barrios Unidos’s mission is to promote peace, unity, and justice in the D.C. area and provide alternatives to violence primarily among youth. This is accomplished through outreach and community organizing, leadership development and job-readiness programs, the arts, theater, computer technology, video and technical training, and classroom and community presentations. The program works with communities and schools to provide workshops on gang awareness and prevention for the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, community-based organizations, and churches. Barrios Unidos believes that community workers who have overcome the challenges facing young people today are best able to assist youth in making life-affirming choices, based on positive self-esteem, meaningful activities, and cultural pride. The vision of safer, stronger communities can be realized only with leaders who can face today’s challenges, and to deny that gangs exist only empowers the enemy of children who are at risk. The program works primarily with Latino youth ages 10 to 18 in the Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods. The program’s services include weekly meetings for young people, parents, friends, and community supporters; youth mentoring by members of the Big Brothers program and other qualified adults; monthly job-readiness workshops; weekly meetings focused on the needs of young women; bimonthly leadership workshops on public speaking and community organizing; and bimonthly workshops focused on the D.C. legal system, U.S. constitutional law, and the federal system. In addition, youth write and produce Barrio Mind, a quarterly newsletter. |