Latino Community Foundation

The Latino Community Foundation was founded in 1989 under the premise of being an organization that would help Latinos help themselves. Founded by Mr. Hugo Morales, because of the rapidly growing population of Latinos in the US, the organization is an invaluable resource to the Latino community of California. There are 38.8 million Latinos in the U.S., who represent a population growth in excess of 10% in two years. California is home to the majority of U.S. Latinos: 11 million Latinos, 1/3 of California's population and 1/3 of the U.S. Latino population. Latinos are rapidly immersing themselves into the market economy, housing sector, public education, and health care spheres of the United States. The dynamic growth of the Hispanic population requires leaders that understand the issues affecting U.S. Latinos. Therefore, the Latino Community Foundation “endeavors to support Latinos in building a strong future though personal, academic, and financial development”. The Latino Community Foundation partners with, and advertises, organizations which it feels are committed to helping create solutions to problems within the Latino community. Some of the affiliated organizations are:

Latino Children and Youth Initiative

The Latino Community Foundation based out of San Francisco will engage Latino-led organizations, corporations, foundations, other private organizations, and government institutions in a collaborative effort to address the critical issues facing our young families with children ages 0-5. The program began in 2008 and hopes to raise and award at least $1 million Latino-based, youth serving, nonprofit organizations in the greater Bay Area.

Of the over 6 million children attending California public schools, almost half are Latino. About 25% of Latino children enrolled in K-12 in California Public Schools are identified as "Limited English Proficient (LEP)". There is an enormous necessity for literacy programs in the Latino community, both for children and parents alike. Fewer than 50% of Latino children five years old or younger have a mother with a high school diploma. The Latino Children and Youth Initiative works improve these statistics and increase the number of children that are healthy and prepared for school success through a variety of comprehensive approaches and programs.

Lee Y Serás ("Read and You Will Be")

Latino fourth graders in six Bay Area counties are four times more likely to score "far below basic" on the English Language Arts Section of the California Standard Tests than their White non-Latino counterparts. Support for children is based upon several programs that offer early childhood enrichment programs on health and education. One of these programs is Lee Y Serás ("Read and You Will Be") which concentrates on a vital concern of early childhood reading and promotion of literacy and parent participationSupport for parents is crucial during the time from early infancy into adolescence as they will often help guide their children into the world.

The Isabela Project

Latino entrepreneurs traditionally have been under served by financial markets and corporate contracts. For this reason, the Isabela Projects was formed in 2004 by the Latino Community Foundation and the San Francisco Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to promote investment and increase viability of Latino small business. The initiative is to help close the Latino capital parity and procurement gap in the Bay Area raising $75 million to $100 million for an investment pool and significantly bolstering the corporate procurement opportunities available to Latino suppliers.

This effort was an attempt at building, growing and, most importantly, sustaining Latino businesses, as it is one of the main struggles the Latino community faces today. It helps to promote the liberation of Latino businesses and overcome the language barriers that manipulate inter-cultural business deals and relationships. Entrenched market players use their political or financial (and at times, linguistic) muscle to undermine or eliminate emerging markets because they fear the competition created by open access to capital. The program fights a huge problem with capitalism: too often, the capitalists don't share it.

Equal Housing Opportunities for the Latino Community

The minority homeowner crisis in California is an increasingly harmful problem in and around the Bay Area. Marcela Davison Aviles is the executive director of the Latino Community Foundation and she addresses this problem, “A recent report by the Greenlining Institute that indicates that California has the second lowest homeownership rate in the nation. In California, only 56 percent of the population owns a home, versus 68.4 percent nationally. Additionally, just 44 percent of California’s Latino families are homeowners, compared to 72 percent among non-minorities. If this current gap in homeownership persists, California’s Latino population will not only represent the state’s new majority, but also its largest caste of renters.” There is a very large issue with homeowner discrimination in California. The Latino Community Foundation aims to educate on this discriminatory issue.

External links

* [http://www.latinocf.org/about/aboutus.html Official web site]