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Durham’s El Centro Hispano aids Carrboro Latinos

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Staff

Victoria Hamby
Courtesy of the Carrboro Commons

With the opening of a new office at Carrboro Plaza later this year, the Latino community once again will have its resource center.

The board of directors of El Centro Latino, an organization that officially closed its doors in November of last year due to financial problems, has announced plans to merge with El Centro Hispano, located in Durham. The new center will be recognized as a Carrboro branch of El Centro Hispano.

According to Josmell Perez, a member of El Centro Latino’s board of directors and multicultural programs coordinator for the Department of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs at UNC, the two organizations share similar purposes and El Centro Hispano has sufficient financial resources to support an office in Carrboro. He said the Carrboro branch of El Centro Hispano will address concerns from the Latino community that were raised after El Centro Latino ceased operations.

“We received concerns from the Latino community, not only about the lack of a central gathering place, but many were also afraid that they would not have a place to turn to where they could find someone to help them out with their problems,” Perez said. “They were concerned about the lack of a support system.”

El Centro Latino opened in 1999 in the Douglas Building in downtown Carrboro. In addition to providing individualized employment assistance, the center conducted after-school programs for Latino children and held events that raised cultural awareness.

Perez said that El Centro Hispano’s Carrboro branch will offer the same services previously offered by El Centro Latino.

“It is a place where they feel they can go, with whatever issues they may have,” he said. “It is sort of their one-stop shop.”

Perez said that in the two months following El Centro Latino’s closure, other nonprofit organizations around Chapel Hill and Carrboro volunteered to help address the needs of Carrboro’s Latino community.

Judith Blau, director of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center and a UNC sociology professor, said her organization frequently consulted with El Centro Latino, particularly when the two organizations collaborated to plan Festival Latino last April. The center also petitioned the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in January to criminalize the practice of withholding the wage’s of day laborers

“We recognize the scope of the services that El Centro Latino had and we are – on a smaller scale – trying to replicate them,” Blau said.

Sarah Gilbert, a UNC senior political science and journalism major from Mooresville who volunteered at El Centro Latino her freshman year, said she is relieved to hear that efforts to reach out to the Latino community will continue in Carrboro.

“I used to volunteer with El Centro Latino, and I was very impressed with the work they were doing in the community,” Gilbert said. “I helped out at events that they held to increase awareness about their programs, and I was very disappointed when I learned that they were being forced to shut down due to funding problems.

“The work that they do is incredibly important, so I’m glad they have found a way to continue to support the Latino community.”

A public meeting will be held Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Seymour Senior Center at 2551 Homestead Road in Chapel Hill to introduce the Carrboro branch of El Centro Hispano to the community and answer any questions the public may have. For more information, contact El Centro Hispano at 687-4635.

Victoria Hamby is a UNC student writing for the Carrboro Commons, a bi weekly online lab newspaper for Jock Lauterer’s community journalism class at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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