Opening Doors to Opportunities for a Better Future

Sandra Gutierrez is being honored as a Cesar E. Chavez Champion of Change.

Parents are among our country's unsung heroes. They shoulder the most important responsibility of all—raising our beloved country’s future generations. The parenting journey is rewarding, often challenging, and lasts a lifetime.

I’m grateful to be considered a White House Champion of Change and remain ever inspired by the hard-working families I have been privileged to learn from and work with for over 40 years.

Parents—regardless of their level of education, first language, immigration or economic status—have similar aspirations for their children. I often hear parents say, “I came here to work, to work hard, so that my children will have more opportunities than I had. I work so they will have a better life and a better future.” As leaders of their families, parents make decisions of great consequence, especially for young children. The good news is that small, positive daily acts—talking, counting, reading, singing—can have a big impact on children’s success.

The Abriendo Puertas / Opening Doors program acknowledges and honors that deeply held aspiration of many parents for a better future for their children. Abriendo Puertas is a two generation model designed to support this vision by working with Latino families to ensure that parents of children aged 0 to 5 are informed and engaged as their child's first and most influential teacher.

We frequently hear about the “achievement gap” between Latino and non-Latino children. I believe “opportunity gap” is a more honest term, because it identifies the root of the gap as systemic and circumstantial, rather than a failure on the part of the child. At Abriendo Puertas, we expand opportunities for families by taking the best research off the shelf and making it accessible and actionable for Latino parents throughout United States.

The Abriendo Puertas curriculum, infused with parent input, uses popular education methodologies. We demystify school readiness and promote parent leadership and advocacy. We provide key local data and outside resources such as Let's Move!, MyPlate, U.S. Dept. of Education Early Learning, and the Affordable Care Act. Armed with greater confidence and data about the education, economic and health status in their own neighborhoods, parents become vocal advocates for improving underperforming schools, increasing social and economic resources, and promoting healthier lifestyles.

In our efforts to ensure best practices and to contribute to the field, Abriendo Puertas recently participated in a rigorous independent evaluation by Child Trends. The study found that our program has a number of important areas of impact, especially related to education. These findings will allow us to continue to improve our services and focus our efforts in areas where we can have the most impact.  

Cesar Chavez once said, “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”

His clear belief in the heroism of farmworkers and the power of advocacy and collective action inspires us to work hard so that parents’ hopes and dreams for their children are converted into clear goals and informed plans. Important challenges—need for immigration reform, improving education quality—demand attention and are key to unlocking the incredible potential in our rising diversity. With the current historic focus on early education, reading, family engagement, and on boys of color, the climate is conducive for parent leadership and advocacy to help eliminate the opportunity gap and create a better future for children.

Sandra Gutierrez is the National Director of the Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors Program. Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors is the nation’s first comprehensive and evidence based training program developed by and for Latino parents with children ages 0 to 5. 

Youth Development: It’s the Other Way Around

Diego Uriburu is being honored as a Cesar E. Chavez Champion of Change.

Montgomery County—like many communities across our nation— has changed. Its residents’ average income, level of education, countries of origin, and access to opportunities are very different than in times past. It has become a place where there are only winners or losers; for those who can manage to access the opportunities that exist, their pathway is golden. Those who can't are usually isolated and disadvantaged. Unable to complete their education—and unprepared for the jobs available—they remain disconnected. They are left behind. This is a reality that must be transformed at the community level if our children are to succeed.

Since immigrating to the United States from Argentina, I’ve committed myself to the progress of the Latino community in the county, and I’ve advocated for systemic changes at the policy level with the government, school system, and community leaders. In 1998, when I co-founded Identity, Inc.—a community-based organization in Montgomery County, Maryland—the Latino community was already beginning to migrate from Washington, D.C. to the surrounding suburban counties: a trend that has continued for over 15 years.

Since then, Identity has considerably expanded the scope and reach of its programs in response to an ever-increasing need for services for the steadily growing Latino community. Identity serves a vulnerable population in the county, many of whom have experienced trauma, cultural isolation, and interrupted education, which can be daunting hurdles to overcome. Although they live in one of the nation’s wealthiest areas, Latino youth and their families often struggle with the obstacles of poverty, joblessness, and poor educational outcomes. Working with the community, we can turn these outcomes around.

In addition to its programmatic efforts, Identity spearheaded the Latino Youth Collaborative, a coalition that worked with more than 100 individuals from different sectors (county government, county council, school system, board of education, non-profits, community, etc.) to develop specific recommendations to improve the education, health, and safety of the Latino community, which were endorsed by the County Executive.  This effort resulted in the County Executive allocating funds in next year’s budget to develop a youth workforce strategic plan that will include the development of pathways for young people for whom college is not a viable option. 

In an effort to improve the academic achievement of Latino youth, Identity has also been successful in securing the commitment of the Superintendent of Schools to jointly develop an educational program model for Latino students. The overall goal is to ensure that these youth receive the foundation necessary to graduate from high and transition to post-secondary education, and the workforce.

I am humbled to be honored with the Champion for Change award, and I am even more humbled by the opportunity life has given me to serve such an incredible and deserving community.

As one of Identity’s values states; to serve others is a privilege and requires excellence. The youth and families we serve inspire us to live that value. I’m in awe of their strength and perseverance; they are our greatest asset in advancing the future of our community. They are the true champions of change, and help us to be the people we want to be, every day.

Diego Uriburu is the Executive Director of Identity, Inc. and also serves on several community groups, including the Latino Youth Collaborative Oversight Group as Co-Chair, Montgomery Moving Forward group as Co-Chair, the Latino Student Academic Achievement Group as a member, and the Latino Public Safety Work Group as a member.

Raising Educational Expectations of Young Latinos

Graciela Tiscareño-Sato is being honored as a Women Veteran Leaders Champion of Change.

As she exited the school auditorium, the little girl tugged gingerly on my sleeve. She had just watched me do my “STEM of Aviation” presentation that included a reading of Good Night Captain Mama/Buenas Noches Capitán Mamá, the first bilingual children’s book about women in the military. Excitedly and in Spanish she exclaimed, “Capitán Mamá, yo quiero volar en aviones como tu!” [Translation: Captain Mama, I want to fly on airplanes like you!]

Squatting down to her eye level, as mothers intuitively do, I told her I know she’ll learn all the math, science and reading needed to make her dream happen. Holding her hand, I told her to never, ever let any adult tell her she couldn’t do it. She smiled and joined her class. In that precious moment, the decision to use my status as a Latina military veteran turned publisher of bilingual and multicultural books that spark dreams of adventurous futures, was solidly validated. This little Latina whose first language (like mine) was Spanish, was now dreaming of one day flying airplanes.

As an American-born daughter of Mexican immigrants with a Master’s degree, silver Air Force aviator wings, and two decades of global work experience, my mission as a social entrepreneur in educational publishing is to create aspirational literature that’s widely adopted in schools and showcases the many success stories from my beloved Latino community. I intentionally pursued this endeavor for the benefit of young students and to simultaneously help reverse decades of low expectations of Latino students and negative media stereotyping in all its forms.

This work was sparked by hardship twelve years ago, when I birthed my severely premature, one-pound baby girl. Documenting the 137-day hospitalization and her blindness helped me cope with the difficulties. We’ve always been encouraged by parents of older blind children to have high expectations.

Our daughter is now a joyful Braille reader and writer, a whiz with adaptive technology, the 5^th grade commencement speaker and a finalist in the “Braille Bee” at the California School for the Blind. If she can achieve all that without eyesight and with a severe hearing impairment, imagine what little Latinos without those impairments can accomplish, if only all educators, administrators and parents have high expectations of them.

Our nation is facing one of the greatest civil rights challenges of our time–weak educational attainment numbers for our fastest growing ethnic group. In 2011, as we launched our first book, Latinnovating: Green American Jobs and the Latinos Creating Them, I cited frightening, absolute numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics in my article titled “Two by 2020 Mentoring Challenge.” The USA is only graduating 140,000 Latinos annually with bachelor degrees (versus 611,000 needed annually to return us to the top of the most-educated nation list.)

This country needs MANY more entrepreneurial success stories of people with last names like Ramirez, Salazar, Caballero, Rincon and Rojas as profiled in our Latinnovating series. It’s all-hands-on-deck time. If you have a college degree will you please pledge to mentor two Latino students toward their degrees by 2020? Millions of children of immigrants need mentors to ignite their imaginations and provide guidance on how one achieves a degree. This is how we can “Out-innovate and out-educate” other nations, rising to the challenge stated by President Obama.

I’m deeply honored to be recognized by the White House for my military service and my social entrepreneurship work. I recognize that my professional life, since breaking tradition and leaving my parents’ home to attend Berkeley on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, has been blessedly extraordinary. I’m compelled to motivate others to follow my lead and those whose stories my team and I are privileged to publish.

Graciela Tiscareño-Sato is CEO and Founder of award-winning, educational publishing firm Gracefully Global Group LLC located in the San Francisco Bay Area where she serves K-College students and educators as a bilingual STEM consultant. Graciela is the author of the Captain Mama and Latinnovating book series, and a sought-after keynote speaker and co-founder of the National Women Veterans Speakers Bureau, the first such bureau comprised entirely of professional speakers who are veterans and published authors.