Enroute to Empowerment 

La Colectiva de Delaware’s vision is an empowered, trusting and connected Latino community. Our work strives to promote collaboration among our nonprofit members and for-profit and government organizations to engage and support the communities we serve. During the past year, it has become clear that none of us can succeed if we fail to address the many, very visible inequities across our communities.

Empowerment begins within. To become strong and gain control over one’s life, access to information, communication and learning opportunities in one’s language are necessary. Knowledge and understanding, new behaviors and actions, as well as attitudes and motivation result from interactions with our immigrant families. Trust and culturally sensitive, supportive relationships are critical. Many of us are in positions to identify access, needs, and now, all of us see the many inequities that limit opportunities.

This Newsblast features Votamos We Vote. After a very successful pre-election information campaign to be “the voice for the voiceless,” a new weekly radio/Facebook Live program in Spanish will bring attention to and actions for our undocumented families. We all must learn and act.

As we advocate for families, we must ensure that programs have the resources to reach our diverse families. We can no longer be silent when programs integral to family development are in English only. Sometimes, we need to ask “what is the plan” to make programs accessible to our immigrant families.

This Newsblast congratulates:

  • Read Aloud Delaware for its first Lena Start program for Spanish-speaking parents of babies and young children – See below.
  • Delaware Thrives for its first pilot series of Books, Balls and Blocks in Spanish at 11 a.m. April 17, May 1 and May 15. This program teaches parents about developmental milestones during pre-school years. Information: dethrives.com/booksballsblocks or email Paulina Gyan or Daphne Evans at booksballsblocksde@gmail.com.
  • The State of Delaware on the COVID-19 Vaccine Toolkit with fact sheets and media posts in Spanish and several other languages. We also thank TidalHealth Nanticoke and Dr. Sandra Palavecino for providing a COVID-19 vaccine videotape in Spanish.

We are very pleased to see increasing opportunities for our Latino families to learn, grow and become increasingly empowered.