Category: Latino Journalism

NEEDS UPDATING

The HHAF (Hispanic Heritage Awards Foundation) and the HCF (Hispanic College Fund) have developed the LOFT – Latinas on Fast Track program, an initiative designed to aggressively provide America’s workforce with premier, emerging Hispanic professionals.

For more than two decades, the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s Youth Awards program has recognized and honored Latino high school students from across America. Award winners are selected for their outstanding accomplishments in their communities and classrooms and for academic excellence in fields such as Community Service, Business & Entrepreneurship, Education, Technology & Engineering, Media & Entertainment, and Healthcare & Science.

The LOFT initiative was created as an extension of the Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards and the Hispanic College Fund scholarship program, in which both nonprofit organizations recognize the top-performing Hispanic students across the United States for their accomplishments in the classroom and community. LOFT is HHAF and HCF’s reaction to the lack of Latinos in the professional or executive workforce.

“The discrepancy between the burgeoning Latino population and the composition of corporate America’s workforce is of concern,” said HHAF President and CEO Jose Antonio Tijerino. “For the most part, the public and private sector simply have not kept up with the progress made by the Hispanic population.

There is a myth floating around about the lack of Hispanic talent in America. With LOFT, we are not only going to dispel that myth, but we are also going to bury it and stomp dirt on it. We are committed to putting our young leaders in a position to lead in the next frontier for Latinos-America’s workforce.”

More than 3,000 former Youth Award and HCF scholarship recipients make up the starting base of “candidates,” who have been selected by independent committees of community leaders and specialists in various fields from tens of thousands of applicants. Each year, an additional 700 candidates will be added to the base. For instance, in 2016, 700 candidates were selected from more than 15,000 applicants.

The breakdown of the LOFT candidates is:

• 20% engineering, computer, math
• 32% sciences
• 26% business, management, economics, finance
• 22% communication, international, public policy, and other

“It is clear there are many highly qualified Latino professionals graduating from our nation’s best colleges and universities,” said HCF President and CEO, Fernando Barrueta. “It is also clear that Corporate America needs highly qualified professionals to continue growing economically and take the organizations to higher levels in a very competitive environment. The lack of clarity in putting Corporate America together with the highly professional Hispanic workforce that it needs is what LOFT is designed to overcome.”

Although Hispanics are the largest minority in America at almost 15% and will represent 100% of the workforce growth within 10 years (source: Labor Dept.), less than 5% are in management.

Currently, Hispanics only graduate from college at 1/3 the rate as non-Hispanic whites and from high school at 62% compared to 90% respectively. The upside to the LOFT initiative investment is that more than 35% of Hispanics are under 18 years of age; the future is the focus of this new effort. Former National Youth Award recipient Michelle Mayorga, a graduate from Yale, has worked with HCF Development Director George Cushman to coordinate the relationships between the candidates and the companies or organizations supporting the LOFT initiative.

“Traditional approaches simply aren’t working,” said Miami native Michelle Mayorga. “I’m here to ensure America’s workplace gets a good look at our young professionals once they graduate from the top colleges in the country. The mission of LOFT is not only important but also vital. Our directive is about taking action: instead of waiting for the workforce to find Latinos, we’re going to go and find the workforce.”

Of Nicaraguan descent, Mayorga served as the catalyst for the creation of the program when she couldn’t find a job coming out of college with heavy credentials. Upon receiving a call asking for help from Mayorga, Tijerino immediately started developing the initiative with Cushman, Barrueta, and Robby Gregg, AOL’s Director of Diversity and Communications. Subsequently, Mayorga was tapped to implement the effort.

“If we’re asking the public and private sector to trust our LOFT candidates with their business objectives, we can certainly trust Michelle to facilitate their relationship with top emerging Latino professionals. She serves as an important communicator, bridging the gap between America’s workforce and the premier, emerging Latino professionals,” said Cushman.

For example, once key candidates have been identified as good fits for the company (criteria might include college attended and major, current residence, bi-lingual capabilities, and personality profile), they will be coached by Mayorga and Cushman to ensure preparedness during the interview process. Mayorga will have visited the company’s headquarters to get a feel for their culture in an effort to better “pitch” the candidate. A meeting will subsequently be arranged with Mayorga sitting in to raise the comfort level of the candidate and company.

In addition, creative measures will be taken to ensure assimilation and retention of the candidate with the company. For example, a tailored guide will be created, which will include area restaurants, dance clubs, community centers, places of worship, and Latino-friendly neighborhoods near the workplace. The focus will be on building “sustainable relationships.”

For over two decades, the Hispanic Heritage Awards Foundation has celebrated the outstanding achievements of Hispanic Americans and provided role models to inspire youth through their stage and television production, which is broadcast nationally on NBC and Telemundo Stations. The Youth Awards were founded in 1998 with the mission of identifying and promoting the next generation of role models. The program celebrates the accomplishments of a select group of Hispanic high school seniors in the classroom and community through regional ceremonies in 12 cities where, each year, half-a-million dollars in educational grants are distributed.

The Hispanic College Fund is a non-profit private organization dedicated to the education and development of future generations of Hispanic professionals across the U.S. The HCF reaches its goals by raising funds from individuals, corporations, and other entities and awards scholarships for students seeking higher education in science, business, engineering, and technology. The HCF has provided over $5.5 million in scholarships to more than 3 thousand Hispanic students since it was founded in 1993.

On a recent reporting trip to Guatemala, I saw firsthand the work of ALAS/WINGS, one of the CAMY Fund’s grantees. So let’s take a closer look at the CAMY Fund and the WINGS Youth Network.

The following Donaldina Cameron House video was presented a few years ago at the annual CAMY Awards Gala and gives you a good sense of the work the CAMY Fund supports.

We arrived in the city (population: 144,461) in the afternoon and headed to the WINGS office to meet the team. We knew Fidelia Chub, the project leader for the CAMY Fund, but had not yet met her colleagues: Kimberly Morales, Director of Programs; Dominga Torres Morales, a Peer Educator alongside Fidelia; and Ana Iczep, a Health Promoter with the organization.

The next day, Michele and I joined Kimberly and Fidelia on a visit to the nearby community of Tanchi to meet with potential youth leaders and their mothers. Cobán’s streets quickly gave way to a lush-green gravel road as we bounced along.

Continue reading CAMY Fund and WINGS Youth Network

In the United States, the expansion of the Hispanic population over the last decade has been bigger than ever before. Research indicates that people of Hispanic origin represent almost 18% of the entire US population.

Expectations are that this figure will double in the years that lie ahead. So let’s take a closer look at the possibilities of financial support for Hispanics.

For this reason, Hispanics were able to get a great deal of attention from nonprofit organizations and state and federal authorities. These days, a good amount of financial support is provided to Hispanics, available as scholarships, employment programs, and educational programs.

Also, the GED test, which grants the equivalent of a high school diploma, is offered in Spanish for individuals who have difficulty with English.

However, the majority of Hispanic students choose a prep program and the test in English because there are far more possibilities for holders of the English version of the GED diploma, says the owner of Kate Jay from BestGEDClasses.org, a provider of free online GED prep classes. Continue reading Financial Support for Hispanics

The identity views of Hispanic and Latino communities in America are changing, but that as such is nothing new. It’s been going on for decades.

Some fifty years ago, the term ‘Hispanic’ was merely used in government statistics for identifying groups of people of Cuban, Puerto Rico, Mexican, or some other Latin American ancestry. This post is about the changes in Hispanic & Latino identity.

But whereas some Hispanics are considering their background to be of one race, they increasingly would prefer to be identified with a specific nationality, for example, Cuban, Dominican, or Mexican.

Today we see that both the terms Hispanic and Latino are commonly and widely used. The Washington D.C.-based Pew Research Center has conducted studies that indicate that most Hispanics would prefer if they were identified in terms of their original nationality instead of pan-ethnic monikers (Latino, Hispanic, or even American).

It hasn’t always been like this, though. American social attitudes have strongly affected how Hispanics view their identity. Things like intermarriage, diversity, and major demographic trends like the recent wave of immigration from Mexico, have had their effect on how they sense their identity.

I’ll give you an example: these days, young Latinos are told by their parents to be proud of their Hispanic identity and to speak Spanish wherever they can, whereas Hispanics who came here or were raised here in the ’50s and ’60s emphasized speaking English and being as American as possible. In those days, they wanted to adapt; now, they want to emphasize their Hispanic identity.

On the other hand, nowadays, 1 in 4 Latino newlyweds are marrying a non-Latino person, only to be surpassed by Asians who are marrying out at an even higher rate. And from all Latino newborns living with their parents, almost 30% are having a non-Latino parent.

These current trends may have an effect on how Hispanics view and call themselves in future times if they already consider themselves to be Hispanic at all.

There are more than two million Americans who are saying that they’re not Hispanic, though they are indicating ancestry roots in a Spanish-speaking region. Probably they belong to that demographic of children and grandchildren of couples that include a non-Hispanic and a Hispanic parent.

But there are more changes taking place these days. In America, immigration is no longer the thriving force behind the growth of Hispanic communities. Today, the growth of the Hispanic populace is caused by American births. This drives down the number of U.S. citizens of Hispanic ancestry who were born outside America.

Today we see that just slightly over 35% of Hispanics are immigrants, and this affects the Hispanic identity as well.

The Pew Research Center surveys are clearly showing that among 2nd and 3rd-generation Hispanics, far smaller shares are identifying themselves by the home country of their ancestors, and the probability that they’ll speak Spanish is also fading with each new generation that’s born in the U.S.

The U.S. Census Bureau currently does not regard Hispanic to be a specific race; the term is rather used to identify ethnicity. However, recently published Pew Research Center studies demonstrate that more than 60% of all U.S. Hispanics feel that their Hispanic roots may be identified at least as partially racial.

Over the past decades, we have seen the Hispanic identity change considerably, and as the number of inter-ethnic and inter-racial will only increase, there is a chance that in the future, the terms ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ will be used less frequently.

Numbers cannot talk, but they may tell you often just as much as human sources. But just like human sources, you need to ask! But what should you be asking a number? Well, that’s where statistics come in. Statistics are crucial to Journalism!

Mathematicians have been developing an entire science, statistics, to come up with answers from numbers. Of course, you’re not required to hold an academic degree in statistics to conduct an ‘interview’ with data, but before you can be successful in doing so, there are a few basics you need to know.

Let’s check out an online tutorial for math-phobic journalists titled ‘Statistics Every Writer Should Know’ that was published for the first time in 1996 by a professional reporter who had also majored in a Northwestern University program called ‘Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences‘ (imagine to fit this on a job application), and who was thinking that using his math background might help a few of his fellow journalists become a little less afraid of statistics and numbers.

The online publication was attracting lots of attention, and through the years and the journalist has received numerous emails in which students thanked him for saving their asses on their final statistics exams. They were no precisely the audience that he aimed for, but he said he okay with helping anyone. Here are a few excerpts from his tips:

Continue reading Statistics Are Crucial To Journalism

Are people getting the news from their preferred source, or in their preferred language? It depends on how you read this question, but in one way it is the sort of ‘chicken-or-egg’ question to what there likely is not a correct answer. Let’s see what the importance or relevance of bringing the news to Miami’s Cuban population in English would be. Let’s consider Spanish & Bilingual reporting for Cubans in Miami – what is it worth?

At a daylong event named ‘Investiguemos: Opportunities and challenges in bilingual and Spanish journalism’, organized by the Center for Investigative Reporting & Open Society Foundations, this question came up pretty often. The conversation that day was pretty far-reaching, but there were actually three key conclusions that emerged from this day.

1. Quality journalism education in the Spanish language is necessary if we want to be able to deal with the immense shortage of high-qualified native Spanish-speaking or bilingual reporters that are serving the countless Spanish-speaking/bilingual communities across the U.S., This is also crucial to set up a varied pool of (potential) reporters in environments where they may be contributing to journalistic or editorial innovations.

2. Native Spanish-speaking and bilingual English-Spanish-speaking communities are different groups in America in a way that they have access to, and are using, news platforms and new technologies in different ways.

3. There is a potentially great impact for investigative journalism stories that come from American Spanish and/or bilingual communities in a way that they may get broadcast and shared with American English-speaking audiences.

Education

At the conference, participants were emphasizing that you can find so many different bilingual or Spanish-speaking communities in America and that the news coverage should be reflecting this diversity as well as the differing requirements and needs of these various populations. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s senior editor Fernando Diaz said that there is a clear lack of well-educated, highly qualified, and fully bilingual professional investigative reporters that are serving the various bilingual and Spanish-speaking communities in America and that the educational system must address this issue.

This key point was echoed by several educators who are involved in bilingual and Spanish journalism programs. They pointed out that mastering formal Spanish-language competencies is crucial if students want to be able to engage in effectively reporting about communities, regardless of which language will be used in their journalistic efforts. Maria Sanchez Diez, a student at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, also said that mastering Spanish is important to get a job, but it is as well a great tool that helps journalists to get access to Spanish-speaking and bilingual communities.

Educators also explained that, In addition to linguistic competencies, students absolutely must be trained in cultural and historical aspects in order to be able to effectively produce journalistic reports about diverse communities. Jose Luis Benavides, professor of journalism at CSU (California State University) in Northridge, explained that at CSU, students minoring in bilingual journalism, on top of language skills, are also required to take classes at the school’s Chicana/o Studies Department to better be able to connect to greater LA’s community context.

Students may also contribute considerably to journalistic innovation. Professor of Journalism Mei-Ling Hopgood (Northwestern University) and Borja Echevarria (VP of Univision Digital) emphasized how important it is to have young, technologically savvy, and bilingual, journalists participate in the organization for designing new, innovative products and journalistic platforms.

Platforms and technology

Amy Mitchell (Washington D.C.-based Pew Research Center director of journalism research), said that her organization’s research indicates that young bilingual Spanish-English speaking persons consume more news content in English, but Univision’s Echevarria was wondering if that trend proves that young people increasingly prefer to consume their news in English, or that this phenomenon is merely evidence that there simply more content in English, at a greater variety, and possibly of better equality than in Spanish.

When asked about the supposedly growing English-Spanish divide, Maria Hinojosa, (founder of Futuro Media Group and host of ‘Latino USA’) said that she was feeling increasingly less confined to speaking in English only on air. She says her audience doesn’t care If she says, ‘O que?’

She says she is going back and forth all the time and they don’t seem to care. Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela (Futuro Media Group digital media director) were saying that ‘Latino USA’ has seen a 300% increase in audience since 2013, that the program now has the largest Latino and African American audience of all NPR programs, and that podcasting now has lust increased the number of listeners.

Univision’s Borja Echevarria says that the organization is currently running a project to make the digital team more user-centered. They will now provide content to the listeners that they need and want, and that’s already present on the social media platforms. All participants at the conference were sharing their visions towards a future where Spanish and English would not be relegated to their own media spaces, but are rather brought together to reflect the reality of America’s bilingual audiences that want high-quality news coverage.

For residents of Florida, the state’s community college system remains one of the most popular and affordable ways for students to begin their post-secondary school education.

In fact, 66 percent of the state’s high school graduates in the Sunshine State begin their college careers at one of the 28 best community colleges in Florida. So let’s see how to find the best community colleges in Florida.

Why Community College?

Some may wonder just why so many Floridian students pick a community college to attend instead of applying to one of the many private schools that exist in the state. These days, of course, cost is a huge factor in the decision.

Even with the federal and state loans and scholarships that are available to lower-income students, the cost of a college education is still very high. By attending one of the best community colleges in Florida, students who maybe never thought they would be able to afford to go to college, get the chance to do so.

There are also a large number of adult Floridians returning to school at the best community colleges in Florida to “re-tool” their career skills during this ongoing economic downturn.

Which are the Best Community Colleges in Florida?

There are 28 community colleges – with 64 campuses in total – dotted across the State of Florida, and all of them would make great candidates for the title of Best Community College in Florida.

The state community college system is one of the most flexible in the nation, as the stated aim of the community college system in Florida is to give access to schooling to as many of the state’s residents as possible, regardless of their economic status or their previous academic record.

Achieving the Dream Program at the Best Community Colleges in Florida

Achieving the Dream (AtD) is a non-profit five-year national initiative to help more community college students succeed.

The initiative is, to a great extent, aimed at certain student groups that traditionally have faced significant barriers to success, including minority and low-income students who may, by attending some of the best community colleges in Florida, become the first people in their family to pursue a college education of any kind. There are also great opportunities for Miami’s Hispanic student population.

Four of the best community colleges in Florida are most involved in the AtD program, although elements of it are found on all 64 community college campuses.

The four designated AtD schools are Broward, Hillsborough, Tallahassee, and Valencia, and to learn more about the special programs offered there, prospective students can visit the official AtD website at achievingthedream.org

To learn more about the Florida community college system in general, including locating the right college in the area of the state you live in, visit fldoe.org/cc/atd/. That’s a great place to start.