Pueblos de Lucha Y Esperanza Minnesota

Through our community engagement program we work to identify community issues that can be addressed through people speaking up on their own behalf. We work with the community to identify issues, organize and form leadership teams, develop action strategies, and involve others to present solutions. This ensures that our community has a voice in decisions that affect them in order to have safe, stable, and healthy neighborhoods throughout the state.our community engagement has included work to preserve manufactured home parks in cold spring, apple valley, and burnsville and to organize park residents around the housing challenges and other issues they face. Voter registration and education was another key focus area in 2018. Through the voto latino campaign, we helped register over 1000 voters, including many potential first-time voters, and offered information on the voting process and the specific elections being contested at different levels of government in Minnesota. Over the course of the year approximately 4,000 people benefited from our community engagement programs.

Building leadership development is core to our mission as an organization to fulfill the call of justice in our community. We promote leadership development through our annual retreat, leadership trainings, and participation in retreats and trainings of the gamaliel network of which we are a member. We also incorporate leadership development into virtually all of our events and programs. We sent leaders to attend the gamaliel national leadership training, and the civil rights for immigrant retreat. About 100 people benefited from our leadership development work.

We educate our community members about their rights by providing educational workshops and public forums. As a latino faith based organization we also organize events that connect our community to their faith and cultural practices. We organized immigration forums across the state with attorneys and experts to educate people about their rights. We also held prayer vigils connecting people to their faith. Our community education and cultural programs benefited around 5,000 people.