Latin American Youth Center

Good evening Madam Chairwoman and members of the D.C. City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at this Public Oversight hearing on the Office on Latino Affairs.

I’m here today in my capacity as Executive Director of the Latin American Youth Center. I have served as Executive Director for the past 20 years, and have worked with the youth center for 28 years.

During this time, I have seen the Latino community in DC grow and evolve, and I’ve watched OLA grow and evolve too, becoming an even more forceful advocate and champion for the Latino community since it was created in 1976.

Today, I’m here to talk briefly about the important role OLA plays in our community.

First, let me give you a little background on the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC). LAYC is a network of youth centers, charter schools, and social enterprises with a shared commitment to helping youth become successful and happy young adults.

Our anchor site in the Columbia Heights neighborhood is a community-based, multi-cultural youth and family development organization founded in the late 1960s and incorporated in 1974 as a non-profit organization. We work with more than 3,000 young people each year, ages 5-24, primarily from the Latino, African-American, African and Caribbean communities. We provide critical social services and numerous education and employment programs.

I’ll just give you a few examples of our programs. We operate an Upward Bound program that helps high-school students become the first in their families to go to college.

We offer residential housing to homeless and unaccompanied youth and to young people who are aging out of the foster care system to help them build the skills needed for independent living.

We provide a number of GED preparatory and job readiness programs, helping young people prepare for and pass the GED and build key work and life skills that will enable them to become productive young adults.

Along the way, we have founded three public charter schools, YouthBuild, The Next Step and Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB).

In part because of the varied nature of the more than 40 programs we offer, the youth center has been able to develop a good understanding of the community and the community’s needs. We’ve had a wonderful, effective ally in OLA. OLA is a terrific advocate for the Latino community and the agency is off to a strong start in 2007.

Just as LAYC has evolved over the years, adjusting to the changing needs of the community, so has OLA. It has grown from a small office to a larger agency, with capable, talented staff.

With Acting Director Mercedes Lemp in place, OLA is executing a smooth transition, as the Fenty Administration moves ahead with its priorities.

The Latin American Youth Center recently worked closely with OLA on the publication and distribution of a report evaluating the Gang Intervention Partnership or (GIP). As you probably know, the GIP is a comprehensive approach to reducing Latino gang-related violence, bringing together elected leaders, the schools, law enforcement and community-based organizations. It was created in 2003 in response to a number of gang-related murders in the Columbia Heights area.

The partners in the GIP thought it would be highly useful to get the program evaluated, to learn more about what was working, to understand what could be strengthened and to identify elements that could be replicated in other DC neighborhoods.

OLA, as it has done so many times before, stepped forward. They funded the independent evaluation and the report was released in November 2006. Gustavo Velasquez and Mercedes Lemp helped make it happen.

That’s just one example.

OLA plays a vital role connecting Latinos to the government and government leaders to the community. In many respects, OLA is the connective tissue between the city government and the Latino community. It plays a key role, educating the community about the Mayor’s priorities, helping to identify needs, opportunities and resources, and working across sectors to match the resources to the needs.

I want to give you another example of the work OLA does -- vitally important work which is sometimes overlooked. OLA networks and negotiates within government to ensure equitable distribution of resources and services to all of the District’s residents. It plays a leadership role in the implementation of the city’s language access law, providing technical support to DC agencies to help them provide services to Spanish-speaking residents.

OLA’s educational grants program helps to ensure many organizations across the city receive the resources they need to support English language acquisition, job training and more for some of the most vulnerable among us.

The Latino community, depending on which numbers you accept, makes up approximately 10-15% of DC’s population. The community’s needs are varied. They change. OLA is doing a solid job keeping pace with the changes and helping to ensure that the Latino community is visible, its priorities are known, and the community is connected to the city’s government.

OLA serves as a strong anchor and is critical to the well-being of Latinos in the District of Columbia. I urge you to ensure that OLA remains a strong, vital asset to the city and community.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here this evening.