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Focus Areas

Our three focus areas – Family Strengthening, Community Development, and Innovation – help us connect families to resources in ways that increase justice and community strength.


Latinos Progresando focuses on both individual families and the broader communities that they are a part of. Moreover, when those families’ and communities’ needs change, we focus on responding in innovative, commonsense ways. This comprehensive approach builds the capacities of people that are already motivated to succeed.

The result is robust communities that people not only want to live in, but can live in stably and proudly.


 

Family Strengthening

We are dedicated to ensuring that each family has the resources it needs to be strong.

Because different legal statuses, native countries, and languages can make it difficult for Latino family members to understand each other, Teatro Americano’s theater productions help different generations see and interact with each others’ stories.

We help immigrant families support children, by offering scholarships for college, mentorship, and leadership opportunities, including ways for youth to create their own theater productions.

Our Legal Services program has developed an expertise in family-based immigration, because we know that Unified families create stronger communities.


Community Development

We help strong neighborhoods develop because we know that supportive families can’t exist without a stable community that can provide for them.

Beautiful neighborhoods inspire residents to be involved and proud. Our Mural Project beautifies neighborhoods, while bringing residents together and making community issues visible.

To promote pride in our communities’ cultural identities, we build cultural celebrations and theater plays that honor Latino stories and immigrant heritage.
 

Since communities are best supported by organizations that coordinate their services, we manage the Marshall Square Resource Network, a coalition of nonprofits and businesses that work as team to serve the Southwest-side.

Because communities can’t thrive unless they’re safe, we offer free legal services for people experiencing domestic violence and art programs that engage youth in structured, nonviolent activities.



Innovation

We engage and listen to our communities, so that we can understand and respond to their changing circumstances.

Our programs don’t just provide services; they give us an avenue to connect community members to resources. For example, when we bring families together for cultural celebrations, we also invite health and financial organizations, so that families can learn about and interact with them in a relaxed environment.

We use our interactions with clients as opportunities to better refine our practices. Based on conversations with our Legal Services clients, we realized that some seniors struggled to study for the citizenship test using flashcards or websites. We now regularly record and distribute study guides on audiocassettes.

Every Teatro Americano play is built out of interviews with neighbors, business owners, cousins and other community members, so that the final script represents current community ideas or worries.

Immigration policies continually change. In order to help our broader community understand current requirements and debates, we coordinate presentations on immigration rights, laws, and myths.