Latin American Youth Center
Lori M. Kaplan, Executive Director
Diane Cottman, Deputy Director
3045 15th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 483-1140
(202) 462-5696 fax

Founded nearly 25 years ago, the Latin American Youth Center has a truly grass-roots heritage: It was organized by a group of Latino youngsters, unhappy because no one was providing worthwhile activities sensitive to the language and culture of their community, who took matters into their own hands and started their own activities program.

It originated as an informal "roving leadership program," in which youngsters did helpful chores in the community like escorting senior citizens; they quickly added recreational activities and arts events, and worked to document the history of the Latino community in Washington and the changes that had taken place. By the '80s, the group's focus was largely educational, using CETA funding to provide training and vocational education for Latino youngsters who'd fallen through the cracks of the public-education system -- everything from a rumba school to an auto-repair shop, predating Milwaukee's Esperanza Unida by several years.

With the "explosion" of Latino immigration to the neighborhood in the late '80s and early '90s, the group continued to expand, too, always shaping its programs to meet the community's expressed needs -- a theater group, a radio program, leadership training, health education, and sticking with the basics, a wide variety of recreational and educational programs, including El Centro Juvenil, a drop-in center that fills a large church basement with noisy, happy youngsters every day after school. A Teen Parents program offers support and self-esteem and parenting help for young mothers, seeking to get them back into formal education.

The Youth Center operates on a $2.4 million annual budget and a staff of 40, of which at least one-fourth are graduates of the program and one-third live in the neighborhood.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

Send him E-mail.

Back to the @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG Home Page