News Clips

EL PASO — Lourdes Rivera tells preschool children to hang all their self-doubts on a tree outside her classroom.

“Here, everything is possible,” Rivera said. “Children know that the phrase, ‘I can’t,’ is unacceptable, not allowed in this classroom.”

Rivera, 44, is well-qualified to teach and preach that the American dream is attainable with education.

Just 13 years ago, Rivera was a Mexican immigrant newly settled in El Paso, without English skills, but with a huge desire to learn.

In 1997, she enrolled with her 2-year-old son in parenting education classes offered through Avance, a nonprofit organization that helps immigrant children and families break the cycle of poverty with early childhood development, parenting skills, adult literacy and healthy marriages.

The stark reality: El Paso is the fourth-poorest city in the United States. Most government estimates suggest 45 percent of the more than 70,000 children under age 5 grow up poor.

Rivera, the mother of three sons, learned English, obtained her GED, earned credentials in child development, picked up an associate’s degree at El Paso Community College and became a lead teacher in Avance’s preschool program. She bought into the American dream in just a little over a decade.

To put a bit more icing on the cake, Rivera plans to enroll next fall at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she wants to pursue a bachelor’s degree in bilingual education.

“It will cost us effort, but we all can accomplish something,” Rivera said.

Rivera is often applauded for giving children and their parents the confidence to do better in life.

“She’s a person who has an enormous desire to learn and get ahead,” said Yvonne Zimmer, a mentor in the Ysleta Independent School District’s Texas Early Education Model program.

“She’s an excellent role model, always tries to do all that is best for the children and always looking for ways to help the community.”

Rivera grew up in a small town south of Chihuahua. She wanted to teach but married young, started a family and never finished school. Her husband, Rumaldo, is a landscaper.

In El Paso, the family moved out of public housing and bought a house in Agua Dulce near Horizon City. Rivera also supports her aging parents in Mexico.

Rivera’s quest for knowledge rubbed off on her children. Her oldest son, Ramon, 27, graduated from Texas A&M University and now works as a computer engineer in Dallas. Ricardo, 19, is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. Victor, 12, is a student leader in the gifted and talented program at Horizon Middle School.

Rivera tells her sons she’ll be next in the family with a university degree.

“The best inheritance we can give our children is not wealth,” Rivera said. “It’s an education.”

Parents like Ana Lozano, who has children in the Avance preschool program, applaud Rivera for helping their children and motivating mothers.

“Lourdes is very understanding, the type of person who injects you with the desire to get ahead,” Lozano said.

Claudia Rivera (no relation), another mother with a 4-year-old son in Rivera’s classroom, has noticed her son already trying to read.

“Lourdes has helped me immensely,” she said. “It’s almost as if she fell from heaven. I’m surprised with what my son learns daily.”

Margarita Sanchez oversees Avance’s child development program at nine sites across El Paso.

“Lourdes came into our parenting program with her small child. From there, she acquired a thirst for education,” Sanchez said. “I see first-hand how much the program helps Hispanics.”

Sanjay Mathur, executive director of Avance, suggests Rivera is just one of many success stories.

“We’re successfully integrating immigrants, breaking the cycle of poverty in one generation,” Mathur said. “The more we educate women like Lourdes, the more advantageous a society is for everybody.”

Rivera’s unpolished English still makes her a bit insecure, sometimes.

“Someday, I will overcome that, too,” she said. “For me, the payoff is not my salary but the satisfaction of seeing children learn and get ahead.”

Rivera’s journey

1997: Enrolls in Avance’s parenting program with her young son. 1999: Starts learning English at El Paso Community College.

2001: Starts working at Avance; family moves out of public housing into its own home. 2002: Completes English as a Second Language classes.

2003: Obtains her GED; receives her accreditation in child development. 2006: Promoted to lead teacher with Avance.

2007: Receives associate’s degree in child development from El Paso Community College.

2008: Texas Early Education Model certifies her classroom as “School-Ready” after three years.

2009: Prepares to pursue a bilingual education teaching degree at UTEP. Source: Avance.

CHAPARRAL — In one room of the Chaparral Community Center, toddlers chanted along with a Spanish nursery rhyme. In another, their mothers and grandmothers sipped coffee as a teacher explained, in Spanish, how to give a baby a bath in a clean sink if a tub was not available — eliciting chuckles when she reminded them to check for soap behind baby’s ears. The classes were put on by the AVANCE organization, which aims to help Hispanic families escape poverty through classes in early childhood development, parenting, adult literacy and healthy marriage. Those efforts were aided Wednesday with the announcement of a $1.066 million grant from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation.

“The grant is over three years and to impact 3,000 children and at least 2,500 families in El Paso and Doña Ana counties,” said Sanjay Mathur, executive director of AVANCE. “In Doña Ana County, next year, we will be in Berino and San Miguel and as far north as Rinc-n and Brazito and Organ.”

AVANCE was one of just three organizations — out of more than 100 applications — receiving major grants, said Susana Navarro, chair of Paso del Norte’s allocations committee.

The women said the AVANCE sessions were beneficial for them — some were in English classes while others were preparing to head back to college — and their children, who were learning to share, speak English and play with other children.

Those in attendance at the check-presentation ceremony, including Silvia Sierra, the county’s director of Health and Human Services, and Doña Ana County Commissioners Oscar Vásquez-Butler and Dolores Saldaña-Caviness told them all to keep up the good work.

“This represents dreams,” said Lily Lim-n, vice chairwoman of the AVANCE board of directors. “In eight, 10, 12 years, you’ll see the results with your children, as they’re graduating high school and going on to college and getting out of here, because, as César Chávez said, ÁS’, se puede!”

We all could roll out our lists of worries about the world, but only a handful really matters. To me, that includes educating the growing number of Latino children who will make or break Texas’ future and make up 47 percent of our state’s 4.6 million students.

That’s why Clarissa Plair strikes me as an excellent choice for the 2008 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year. She’s blazed trails. She’s had an uncommon impact. She’s stared down adversity.

And she’s probably escaped your notice. I hadn’t heard of her, either, until I began researching the social and economic gaps between Dallas’ northern and southern halves. An Oak Cliff pastor told me about her, and am I glad she did.

Not often do you come across a fluent Spanish-speaking African American woman who leads a Latino school challenged by the very socioeconomic factors that form roadblocks to learning. This 55-year old grandmother is the principal of Felix G. Botello Elementary School at Jefferson and Marsalis in Oak Cliff, and she’s turning that school into a model of excellence with against-the-grain leadership.

That would be the recognized Botello Elementary. And that’s far from some old award.

Botello’s recognized ranking from the Texas Education Agency sums up the creativity, devotion and leadership of the staff and students. Those qualities start with the determined woman who roams Botello’s brightly colored hallways with a broad smile and a firm hand. I’ve never found her in her office when I’ve called or visited. She’s always walking the floors so she knows what’s happening.

She spews out education ideas the way Newt Gingrich rat-a-tat-tats political ideas, which you might expect from a graduate of Indiana University who also earned a linguistics master’s from the University of Texas at Austin and two other grad certificates. I won’t forget one call, when she got out of her sickbed to immediately start drilling down into the strategies Botello uses to get its young learners ready for college.

Botello has been in existence only three years but has won Texas’ second highest ranking the last two. She has dragged achievement out of Botello’s 500 kids, putting her school on a par with high-achieving suburban campuses.

Ms. Plair naturally wants Botello to earn an exemplary rating, the highest rank. Its failure to reach that rung doesn’t diminish the accomplishments, not when you consider the school is in its infancy and especially not when you consider its demographics:

Hispanics made up 96 percent of its students last year; 98 percent of those students qualified for free or reduced lunches.

Those facts don’t doom a child. But they make it harder for them to learn at grade level. Ms. Plair experiences this reality every single day. And she keeps beating the odds.

One reason is because she has lived this experience. She and her family made Mexico their home for nearly four years while she taught school, background she uses to reach her students.

When I visited Botello recently, a roomful of Hispanic mothers worked with an instructor on preparing the infants and toddlers in their laps for pre-school. These mothers have older children at Botello and were in class themselves so their younger children wouldn’t enter school behind. The Avance program is part of Botello’s aggressive effort to connect parents to their children’s schooling.

Ms. Plair deflects praise, insisting that other principals and teachers also innovate. Still, she’s shown remarkable success in her first three years, including winning a new principal of the year award from the Dallas school district and being selected a master principal this year, a recognition that earned her school $10,000.

Most important, her triumph embodies what DISD – and Texas – must do to produce the next generation of engineers, teachers and doctors.

And to those who say that poor Latino kids will never learn as well as wealthier suburban kids, come south of the Trinity and see for yourselves. Clarissa Plair will make your cynicism disappear.

A $2.55 Million Grant Will Support Organizational Growth

Hector Ledesma Jr. started life in humble surroundings with few prospects of ever going to college, earning a professional salary or achieving prominence in the television industry. Yet, today he is a well- known sports broadcaster for KABB TV, the Fox affiliate station in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. He also holds a dual degree in broadcast journalism and speech communication from Syracuse University.

Looking back on his childhood years, the 29-year-old broadcaster credits the nonprofit education and support organization known as AVANCE for making a significant difference in his family life and changing the course of his destiny.

Started in 1973 by San Antonio school teacher Gloria Rodriguez, AVANCE offers a bilingual, culturally sensitive parent-child education program designed to help parents prepare their children for school during the critical first three years of life by expanding parental knowledge, attitudes, skills and behavior.

Early childhood research supports the critical need for parents to begin teaching their children from infancy. The social, emotional and behavioral advances made by a child during these pre-school years are fundamental pre-requisites for learning readiness.

Texas-based AVANCE serves primarily Hispanic families in low-income, at-risk communities with a research-proven model that is preventive, community-based, two- generation focused and comprehensive in scope.

“AVANCE helped lay the foundation for how my family raised me,” Ledesma says. “Mom and Dad were only 22 years old when I was born. Both had grown up in pretty poor circumstances and knew only one world. AVANCE helped open their eyes to the value of education and the opportunities it offers.”

After his mother, Diana, attended AVANCE parenting classes for nine months, she assumed a more active role in raising her son, overseeing his homework and attending all his soccer and basketball games. She and his father, Hector Sr., worked hard to put their only child through private schools. Later, Diana was encouraged to resume her own education leading to a GED, and last summer she received an honorary diploma from her former high school.

“AVANCE is critical to the communities it serves because it exposes parents to the possibility of a better life for themselves and their children,” says Ledesma, who now sits on the board of directors of the nonprofit’s San Antonio chapter.

Over the past 35 years, AVANCE (the Spanish word for “advance”) has replicated its effective, sustainable business model throughout Texas, where it currently maintains 10 chapters and 90 to 100 program sites, serving 3,400 families. Now, the nonprofit is poised to expand its parent-child education program into two nearby states. The Kresge Foundation has awarded AVANCE a $2.55 million grant to provide the operating support needed for continued growth and expansion.

“Kresge’s grant will enable us to build the infrastructure and internal capabilities of our overall organization, which in turn will support our in-state and out-of-state expansion efforts,” says Sylvia G. Garcia, AVANCE’s president and CEO. The organization’s five- year plan calls for establishing chapters in California and New Mexico, and, at the same time, strengthening existing chapters and the national office.

Garcia attributes the long-term success of AVANCE’s educational approach to its solid grounding in the human-development principles set forth by the late Cornell University Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner, also the co-founder of Head Start, and to the proactive recruitment of neighborhood residents who participate, volunteer and work in the program.

“Studies have shown that schoolchildren coming from poverty start out behind their peers, and that initial as well as continual parental involvement in the education of a child is critical for school success,” Garcia says. School-readiness assessments show AVANCE children are rated at 90 percent, compared to 35 percent nationally. Furthermore, a 17-year reunion survey revealed that 94 percent of AVANCE children graduated from high school and 43 percent attended college.

“AVANCE is an exemplary organization that is having a significant impact on the health and well-being of young children, especially in low-income Hispanic communities,” says Kresge’s David Fukuzawa, a senior program officer.

You think you’re having a tough time in the current economic downturn? Try running a nonprofit.

Without question, the past 12 months have been challenging. Yet, even as the Hispanic Business Top 25 Nonprofits are hit hard by the economy, social entrepreneurs heading these organizations are finding new ways to cope. While some nonprofits, especially those still in search of a viable business model, are struggling and may ultimately fail during this economic slide, the more successful organizations, such as AltaMed Health Services, which once again ranks at the top of the list, are likely to grow stronger.

The Los Angeles-based health care provider, saw its revenues climb to $88.9 million in 2007, up from $77.3 million the prior year. Still, not all of this year’s nonprofits had prosperous years. For example, Chicanos Por La Causa, fell to fourth place, from second, following a 12 percent dip in revenues. This year also saw four drop off the Top 25, and four newcomers join the list. They include, AvANCe of San Antonio, Texas, ranked eighth; SeR-Jobs for Progress of Irving, Texas, ranked 12th; Latin American Youth Center of Washington, DC ranked 19th; and Asociacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ranked 20th.

Top-Notch Management

AltaMed has remained ahead of the competition and survived the economic downturn by building a top management team and board of directors. “We run a nonprofit with a mission, but we run an organization with the same sort of discipline and focus as any business,” says Castulo de la Rocha, AltaMed’s president and CEO.

The nonprofit provided services to the underserved population of Los Angeles since 1969. Today, it assists an estimated 50,000 people annually. Public funds made up roughly 20 percent of its $88.9 million in revenues last year, while 74 percent came from direct fees for services.

AltaMed recently felt the sting of the subprime mortgage crisis when it lost one of its generous underwriters – Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank.

“You go through these things, and you learn to sidestep the big hits and figure out how to land on your feet,” says Mr. de la Rocha. “I do expect to survive this.”

The Battle for Foundation Dollars

Innovation, diversification, and especially the adoption of strong business models are the keys to success, according to most nonprofit leaders.

A case in point is the San Francisco- based Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF), which ranks seventh on our directory (see the profile on HSF on page 44). The fund has prospered by attracting hard-to- get foundation dollars. According to the Foundation Center, 1.2 percent of grants targeting special population groups went to Hispanic-focused nonprofits in 2006. Frank Alvarez, HSF’s president and CeO, says that Hispanic nonprofits must learn to “speak the language of business” in order to succeed. His organization has embraced technology, strong accounting procedures, regular audits and other stringent business practices. As a result, about 66 percent of HSF’s revenues came from foundation sources last year, compared to an average of about 8 percent for other top nonprofits.

A second nonprofit we review in this issue is the highly successful, Hispanics in Philanthropy, another San Francisco-based organization. HIP’s president says that nonprofits must learn to show foundations how they are delivering “value” to the community in a clear and demonstrable way. She also encourages smaller nonprofits to “think big” and collaborate in strategic partnerships with other nonprofits to show foundations a larger payback to the community.

Some Hispanic nonprofit leaders told us they have tried hard to raise money through foundations, but remain frustrated with very little success. Among the biggest obstacles is matching a donor’s core interest areas.

“You play almost a literacy game with foundations,” says Carmela Lacayo, president and CEO of the nonprofit Asociacion Nacional Pro Personas Mayores (The National Association of Hispanic elderly), which ranks 15th on this year’s directory. “You look at what they’re funding and adapt to those guidelines to get a grant. You can’t just go in there and say, ‘here’s a real, dire need.’”

AVANCE, based in San Antonio, Texas took a unique approach to getting foundations to pay attention. In 2007, it debuted the “Grantmakers Roundtable,” a two-day event that invited the nation’s leading donors to hear about its groundbreaking work in early childhood development. Foundation directors from the W. Kellogg Foundation and Annie e. Casey Foundation, among others, heard remarkable stories from AVANCE’S clients and some longtime donors.

“Our goal was to educate as many foundations that were willing to come and do it in a way where they didn’t hear it from me,” says Sylvia G. Garcia, president and CEO. “We told them, ‘We don’t want a penny from you, we just want to tell you why this work is important’.” The strategy paid off. The Kresge Foundation, a roundtable participant, recently donated $2.5 million. As a result of the event’s success, AVANCE is organizing a roundtable for corporate sponsors.

When Ignacia Perez was pregnant with her son, Erick, she had a lot of worries. Because of her diabetes, she had already lost a girl before she was born, and now she was pregnant with a boy.

But luckily for her, Erick was born healthy and strong.

Perez came to El Paso with her husband and son and, soon after, started taking classes for her GED. She was always the first one in class, and that got her noticed by her teachers, one of them being Juana Rodriguez.

“She’s very motivated to have more education,” Rodriguez said. Rodriguez admires the way Perez remains positive despite financial hardships the family faces.

“The family is low-income. Her husband works in construction, but those jobs are few,” Rodriguez said. “Her son sleeps in the living room of their small apartment, and, even then, she always says that there are other children out there who need more than her child.”

Rodriguez, who works with the agency Avance, nominated little Erick to get a new coat this Christmas through the charity Operation Noel. Erick received the coat earlier this month.

“He was so happy with it,” Rodriguez said. “I know for a fact that his parents didn’t have the money to get him a new coat.”