The Mario G. Obledo NCHO focus is to continue Mario’s voice and legacy. It is with a great sense of the importance of his work and ideals that I proudly serve as President of the Mario G. Obledo National Coalition of Hispanic Organizations. Following Mario G. Obledo’s lead, the organization will continue to be the voice on any issue that affects the Hispanic/Chicano/Latino community. Given the multiplicity of social problems, our attention may include issues on farm workers’ life, diabetes, health, and Immigration Reform, education, discrimination, and prisons. We will continue to educate the non-Latino communities about the reality of Latino hopes and dreams.
The main problems affecting the Chicano/Latino communities are two: (1) education, and (2) resources. These, in our view, are the civil rights issues of the future. Good education leads to better family resources. Thus, we will expend time and resources in the field of education. Our program will concentrate on the parents of Latino and other disadvantaged school children, with emphasis on parents of grammar and high school students. Other organizations are working directly with the students, and we hope to partner with them. However, we will partner with successful Latino or Latina volunteers, a couple or an individual, with the parent or parents of a family, to advise and assist other parents in encouraging their own children to do well in school. The partners will be available to assist and discuss the realities interfering with the student attending school or progressing.
On behalf of the Mario G. Obledo National Coalition of Hispanic Organizations (Mario G. Obledo NCHO), the board, and our Executive Director, Keda Alcala-Obledo, and I join in extending our appreciation for your support. We will continue to be heard and will continue to assist those in need. We look forward to working with you.
Cordially,
Cruz Reynoso
OBLEDO EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
As indicated in my “Message from the President” our specific program is to raise resources to implement our Education Program. Studies have shown that school children who are not doing well can be identified as early as the second grade. My own daughter who is a school teacher, tells me that she found the studies to be realistic. We have hired a law student with a teaching background to do the leg work to initiate the program. He reports that a school district has already identified such children in one of its schools and that the teachers welcome our effort. We are starting slowly. I have asked him to identify ten school children in schools in each of the cities of Davis, Woodland, and Sacramento. We are in the process of identifying college students and adults to partner with the children and their families. We already have several volunteers. The children identified are not all minority. While one of the school children who is doing less well than other ethnic and racial groups, our program will assist school children irrespective of racial or ethnic identity.
Often children do less well due to matters seemingly unrelated to school. They may have medical or transportation problems. Our program calls for the adult partners to identify and help correct those issues. If the problem is school related, we will seek further resources to help with the reading, language needs of those who do not speak English, or similar needs.
A strength of the program is that the children will have assistance from second grade through high school. The hope is that the children and their families will be encouraged to do well in school. If a student does not do well in grammar school it will be hard to do well in high school, and if a student does not do well in high school, college will be even harder.