La Plaza Central

Presentamos a la comunidad con mucho gusto, nuestro nuevo programa de Charlitas y Café!  Este es un programa que junta a los que deseen practicar su segundo idioma a través de la formación de equipos bilingües constituidos de hablantes nativos de inglés y español.  Cada equipo, constituido de dos a seis personas, se reúne cada semana para compartir equitativamente su tiempo charlando en cada idioma.  Puede ser que salgan los participantes a la ciudad a explorar, o que vayan al museo de arte para ver la nueva exibición, o nada más que se vayan a la biblioteca o al café para conocerse más estrechamente.   Nuestra primera reunión se realizará el SÁBADO, 5 DE FEBRERO 2011, A LAS 4 PM, aquí mismo en El Centro de las Américas.  Lleva al fondo el programa la misión de formar amistades multiculturales, profundizar el conocimiento de culturas diversas, proveer la oportunidad para mejor las capacidades linguísticas a cada participante, y achicar las barreras culturales y linguístas que dificultan la vida de cada participante.

Si a ud. le gustaría saber más acerca del programa, por favor que pase por El Centro, el día SÁBADO, 5 DE FEBRERO 2011, A LAS 4PM.

CLASES DE INGLÉS: Arrancaron de nuevo nuestras clases de inglés el jueves pasado, y hoy mismo se deleita en anunciar que vamos a abrir una segunda clase de inglés básico, debido a la alta participación la semana pasada!  Cada jueves, de 6:00-8:00 pm se reúnen las clases, dos del nivel básico, y una del intermedio.

CLASES DE COMPUTACIÓN: Las clases de computación empezaron el lunes pasado (24 de enero), y van a seguir reuniéndose en el Clyde Malone Center (justo al lado del Centro de las Américas) cada lunes siguiente desde las 6:oo pm hasta las 8:00 pm, hasta su último día de clases, el 14 de marzo.  El costo para cada clase es $25.00.

GOLDEN WARRIORS PROGRAM:

Nuestro exitoso programa golden warriors, bajo la guía de Erick Saavedra, se junta cada viernes aquí mismo en El Centro de las Américas, de 6 a 9 de la tarde.  Erick tiene su programa tambiénen North Star High School los miércoles, de 3 a 4:30pm ¡y ya pronto vamos a celebrar el estreno de Golden Warriors en Irving Middle School!  Este programa se encuentra abierto a la participación de cualquier joven entre las edades de 10 a 18, entonces que vengan todos los que estén interesados.  Puede llamarle a Erick aquí en El Centro al 474-3950.

¡Que visiten el programa en la red para ver su documental!

Preparación gratis de los Impuestos:  para todas aquellas personas que necesitan ayuda con los impuestos ¡¡no pierdan su oportunidad para prepararse los impuestos!!  vamos a dejar nuestras puertas abiertas para la preparación de sus impuestos cada martes hasta el 12 de abril, de 5 a 7 de la tarde, pero ojo, que lleguen puntualmente, que hay cupo limitado, y que traigan todos los documentos necesarios para tramitar los impuestos.  Por ejemplo:

Si ud. ya tiene un número de seguro social, necesitamos una copia de cada w-2 recibido del año 2010, y cualquier otro documento que conste algún otro ingreso anual.

Para aquellas personas que no tienen seguro social, van a tener que tramitar para un número ITIN, para poder declarar sus impuestos federales (o para reclamar a cualquier dependiente que no tenga seguro social).  Para cada aplicación se exige o pasaporte o dos otras formas de identificación (acto de nacimiento, licencia de conducir, identificación de su país natal, etc.).

Las puertas se abrirán puntualmente a las 5 (ni antes, ni después de las cinco), y si ud. no tiene todos los documentos necesarios, no podrá seguir con el trámite de los impuestos.  ¡Les agradecemos mucho su cooperación!

May is usually a loco month, what with the weather finally coming around, subsequent bar-be-cues, May/Armed Forces/Memorial Day(s), my dad’s birthday, Cinco de Mayo, plus everyone all graduating and getting married and stuff.

But this Sunday we will take a collective, historical break to promote the mothers we love. The ancient Romans called it Matronalia, Julia Ward Howe wrote a stirring Proclamation about it in its nascent days, and on Monday at El Centro we are celebrating Mother’s Day with an almuercito followed by regalitos and a rifa. For those of you who don’t sprechen sie español, I’m talking about a small lunch, some presents, and a raffle!

Point is, despite May’s swirl of events, take a minute to give ol’ ma a hug.

I’ve been recently more bothered by the ‘learn English’ issue we have with  immigrants. The bothersome part is that many people stop after that single notion, that single command. If we unpack the notion we find positive arguments for assimilation and civic duty, a vehicle for accessing the American Dream…on the other hand we get things like this or even this. I’ll argue that the individuals in these two photos stopped after the single notion (if not before, given their spelling aptitude). The trouble manifest in not further exploring a notion is ostensibly that nothing will come of it. Is ‘learn English’ a viable notion? Of course, and it’s one I latch onto. But I’ll argue that instead of presenting some beguiling, paradoxical ‘learn English’ picket sign, we act on the notion.

Enter our agency, where we recently developed a free, weekly course called Hablemos Español which provides enrichment tools aimed at keeping Spanish skills shared between the generations of a Hispanic immigrant family. Pair that with programs like Family Literacy, ELL, and job search assistance, among others, and we’ve rounded the edges to a complete package for education, integration and assimilation, while still stressing the importance of hanging on to culture and heritage.

So if you see a man who you know or assume to know doesn’t speak English and feel  he should, don’t put a sign in his face (one he wouldn’t be able to read anyhow?) — send him our way, we will help him.

I came across a book about nonprofits recently that I wanted to talk about here on the blog.  I first heard about the book from Nicholas Kristof’s NY Times column.  It wasn’t in the Lincoln City Libraries, so I suggested via their online suggestion form that they add it, and lo and behold they added it right away.  I read the book a few weeks ago, and it presents some really interesting ideas.

So the basic premise of the book is that nonprofits are heavily constrained by various rules and regulations that prevent them from making a profit.  The book’s author, Dan Pallotta, argues that profit is the greatest motivating factor known to man, and nonprofits by their very definition don’t consider it as an option.  Additionally, the nonprofit world generally frowns on spending money on things like advertising and executive salaries or taking risks on projects, all things that are taken for granted in the profit sector.

Pallotta’s former company, Pallotta TeamWorks was a for-profit company that worked with non-profits to create charity events that raised exorbitant sums of money for AIDS research before criticism about overheads slightly above the industry standard and high advertising spending caused the company to lose contracts and eventually implode.

His solutions for the non-profit sector amount to changing the rules to allow for internal competition amongst non-profits and to allow non-profits to compete with businesses.  He says if Coca-Cola can use advertising to sell sugar water, then why can’t an organization use advertising to publicize their projects and request donations?  Pallotta also emphasizes doing away with the emphasis on overhead, the money spent on salaries, buildings, utilities, advertising, etc. that doesn’t go directly towards meeting an organizational objective,  in non-profits.

Pallotta most contentious point for me is his notion that investors should be able to invest in non-profits and then turn a profit on their investment if the non-profit is successful.  In Pallotta’s system, an investor could loan money to an organization for a fundraising event, and then a percentage of the donations taken in at the event would be returned to the investor.  So what’s to stop people with the means to give from wanting to be investors instead of donors?  And would donations go down if donors knew that part of their donation would never even make it to the organization?

On the whole, I like a lot of what this book has to say.  Non-profits could certainly stand to borrow some tools from the business sector, and for well-run organizations at least, a little freedom in spending their money as they see fit would probably be a good thing.  But the devil is in the details, as they say.  Someone far smarter than me and with a lot more time would have to go through the law, statutes, etc. and see where non-profits could be made better while still maintaining their essence, which is why most of us got into this business in the first place.

This article is my last word on Cinco de Mayo.  I thought I’d include it, because it mentions several interesting facts.  The article talks about Mexican culture’s dominance in the Latino community in the United States.  Holidays like yesterday have no significance for nearly half of all Hispanics living in the States.  Yet many Latinos must combat the stereotype that because they’re Latino, they’re Mexican.

On one hand, there’s some reason behind the perception.  There are an estimated 11 million Mexican-born immigrants in the states, which is nearly as many as all other immigrants from Latin American countries.  The next highest total is El Salvador with around 1 million.  But at the same time, every country has their respective customs, traditions, histories, national identities and even their own version of Spanish.  (Be careful where you say bicho (bug) in Central America.)  Could Radio Lobo please just once play something besides música durangense?

And despite these differences, issues like immigration reform and social injustice bring the whole Latino together as a single community, with alliances across the board.  Interesting dynamics going on there.

I’ve been sitting on this post for awhile, because I didn’t want to do it until May was upon us.  And now that it is, I want to say that May is Latino Images in Film Month on Turner Classic Movies.   All this month, every Tuesday and Thursday evening, TCM will be showing films that focus on Hollywood’s treatment of Latinos.  They run the gamut from a silent movie made in 1910 to the western drama Lonestar from 1996.  Be sure to check out the website for a movie schedule and trailers for several of the films.

As someone who’s experience with Latino films is primarily old black and white Mario Moreno Cantínflas movies, I’ll be interested to see movies with other stars like Edward James Olmos, Jennifer Lopez and Ricardo Montalban.

This past Wednesday we had our second day of Computación Básica para Adultos. It’s the third installment of the class I teach to Hispanic parents of Everett students and has been coming together well. I’ve finally worked up good content and lessons for them now that they can manage Microsoft Word and have a basic introduction to Internet. We go onto Google and I let them pick any search topic on which they must type up an informative paragraph and copy/paste a picture. Even with my assistant Natalie—a Wesleyan Spanish major—this can eat up our ninety-minute time frame. But you’ve got to hand it to them—before this class ninety percent of them hadn’t used a computer. Ever.

Another ninetieth-percentile statistic is their search topics. They always search their hometowns, which has me thinking of some project we could develop to enhance this nostalgic Internet experience. Email accounts are on tap for next class so I’ve got to ask them how ‘connected’ these hometowns are. Who knows, anything from emailing pictures to video chats with faraway cousins could be in their future. ¡Andale!

Coming on the heels of Wine! Chocolate! Tango! I wanted to show a short video that one of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers in Nicaragua recently produced about the tango culture in Washington DC.

Enjoy!

Here‘s something that flies in the face of what I previously thought.  The Ipsos U.S. Hispanic Omnibus Study (I don’t know what it is either) recently surveyed Latino populations and found that 63% of them access the tubes (internet) at least once a month.  For most of our evening computer class students, the tubes (internet) are a very novel concept when they’re introduced in class, and we often have to start with the very basics such as how to search online or send an email.  I know that the majority of Latinos who already know a little something about the tubes (internet) don’t need our basics class and so don’t take it, but I still would have guessed the percentage was lower than that.  Additionally, the survey found that 55% of Latinos prefer their websites in English instead of Spanish.  And most surprising of all to me, 40% of Hispanic youths aged 18-34 prefer their sites to be in Spanish.  Given that many Latinos in that age group have attended school in the states and learned English at a younger age when it’s easier to do, I thought very few of them would prefer Spanish.

The title of the post comes from an experience I had in Central America.  In two years in Nicaragua I never heard anyone say anything but “el internet“, so I assumed the word was masculine.  But when I moved to Guatemala for a short time people universally referred to it as “la internet“.  I had also heard Panamanians refer to it in the feminine form.  So to this day I still don’t know if the word is masculine or feminine or if it’s like a “choose your own adventure” word and the speaker decides.

Yesterday’s Omaha World-Herald had an article by Cindy Gonzalez about a Community Learning Center in Omaha that presented a lesson on Banda music from the Sinaloa region of Mexico as part of their after school activities.  Community Learning Centers, which are no stranger to Lincoln, offer learning activities before and after school in an effort to increase educational opportunities and reduce the achievement gap.

This particular CLC in Omaha’s Castelar Elementary stresses the importance of a strong familial unit (a primary element of the Latino culture) in a good education.  It is the same concept that we try to promote in our after school literacy activities at Everett Elementary.  While incorporating something that already exists, the importance of family, with an emphasis on a good education and its importance to their children’s future, we aim to improve educational outcomes as determined by increases in several metrics (attendance, participation and grades).

Castelar’s principal has noted improved attendance by the children, and the parents see real value in their children becoming educated about their Mexican heritage and culture.  This sounds like a good start.

For those interested in Banda music, my colleague, Marissa, tipped me off on the most famous Banda band from Sinaloa called El Recodo.  Here is a YouTube video of their music.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmlPhFUoYEI

Te Presumo – Banda El Recodo