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Community Organizing

Community Gathering January 2012

Every month Community members and Centro de Enlace’s staff gather together to discuss community issues. These Community Gatherings use popular education to increase community knowledge about immigrant rights and legislation and address community concerns. At Gatherings, participants brainstorm and work to design community solutions and responses to current immigrant realities and crisis.

Acting out a "Know Your Rights in the Car" scenario at a workshop.

 

 

The 2011 Community Gatherings included an Immigrant Rights Community Gathering facilitated and taught by graduates of past Community Rights Workshops, an Immigrant Family Preparedness Gathering, in which two immigration attorneys privately consulted with each family about viable immigration plans for family members, and two Own Your Center: Needs Assessment Gatherings which used the nominal group technique and group brainstorming to determine those issues and needs that the community most wanted their center to address.

LaTeena Health Team at After School Program

 

 

The LaTeena Health Team is a group of young women who regularly participate in health classes and workshops in general health, nutrition, exercise, and reproductive health. Team members are committed to, in turn, educating the community through health programs and peer counseling.

LaTeena Health Team Excercise Class

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The all volunteer Comité de MANA organizes a monthly community food distribution held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Manna Food Bank supplies some produce and the Center supplements this with culturally appropriate staples and produce.

Centro's MANA Volunteers

The center is working with the community to organize a Comité de Galax, which in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service would educate about safe and sustainable Galax harvesting practices. Yancey County exports more Galax, a plant native to the forests of the Appalachian Mountains, than anywhere else in the world and 90% of the Galax harvesters are Latino. The leaves of the Galax plant are used in decorative floral arrangements.