A Letter From Our Founder & Executive Director
Dear friends of the Latino Community Center,
There is a value that has always been associated with our community, and that is Familia. I can’t think of a better value that grounded us and was core to getting through the many challenges and barriers of this past year. From launching the Latino Family Center, whose sole purpose is to help parents and caregivers raise healthy and happy children, to helping our community members understand and access the vaccine in order to protect themselves and their loved ones; it all centered around Family. No matter how difficult the year got, we knew, as a team, that at the core we were here to support our families.
This year has been one of rapid growth. As you will read throughout our report, we started over 9 different programs, some planned and some unplanned, yet needed. We maintained stability in our educational programs, because we knew that what our kids needed most in this scary and unpredictable time was exactly that, stability. We remained flexible and adaptable to what our community needed, and we tried our best to be there. However, we did not anticipate the demand for our services would far exceed our projections. While we are humbled to know that families trust us and reach out to us in times of need, it has also been hard to know that over 100 families at any given time are on our waitlist due to capacity.
While we have not been immune to the burnout and exhaustion that many nonprofits are experiencing during this time, I am beyond proud of the team, parent leaders, volunteers, and partners who have stepped up and supported one another throughout this time. This includes our team members that are no longer with us, the ones that left due to burnout, due to the mental exhaustion of working in a social service organization during this time. I know that they gave it their all until their very last day with us.
It has been a hard time to be a leader of an organization during this time; however it has also been a time where I got to see the best in people. From donors and funders reaching out proactively, to families supporting each other and partner organizations coming together like never before to bridge the gaps. This is what has gotten us through and I feel fortunate enough to have lived it.
The Latino Community Center is resilient, and while we may have some scratches, some wounds, and definitely trauma, our team and our community is still here and we are still standing strong. I thank you for taking the time to read about us and the impact we have had together on our region.
Rosamaria Cristello
Executive Director
Rosamaria Cristello
Our Impact: At-A-Glance
EDUCATION
PROGRAMS
Emily Blair
Director of Education
Improving Educational Outcomes for Latinx Youth in Pittsburgh
Last year may have been the most challenging we have encountered in education. Opportunities to interact and build positive relationships are critical for high-quality education, especially for multilingual learners. This is incredibly challenging when done through a screen, but our LCC Education Team proved that it can be done. Not only did all of LCC’s educational programs continue virtually, but we also successfully launched 5 new programs: ParentChild+, SOY Pittsburgh Middle School, Virtual Tutoring, Adult ESL, and the Spanish line of the Family Hotline.
In all of our educational programs, students ranging in age from 3 through adult logged in regularly to work with our staff, engage with partners, and grow in their academic goals. In the midst of a difficult year, our students brought us joy day after day. For example, even after spending their school day in front of a screen, our 24 SOY Pittsburgh Elementary students logged in to spend time having fun with their friends. Their wide smiles and happy greetings when they spotted Ms. Aleira and Ms. Jen in their Zoom boxes told us just how much these students value the positive relationships SOY gives them, and that it is a safe and positive place where they want to be, even online.
Our Outcomes
178 students served
37 parents engaged in their child’s learning
A Special Thanks to:
Beechwood ES, South Hills MS &
Sarah Heinz House
for their ongoing partnership and support of our elementary and middle school programming
ParentChild+
In July, 2020 we launched our early childhood home visiting program, ParentChild+. An international model developed for multilingual families, ParentChild+ breaks the cycle of poverty through early literacy, school readiness, and intentional parent-child interaction. In our pilot year, PC+ served 10 families with 3-4 year-olds through twice-weekly virtual home visits. Despite the challenge of engaging virtually with our tiniest learners, families were thrilled with the progress they observed in their children!
Total sessions provided through PC+
366
SOY (“Supporting Our Youth”) Pittsburgh
SOY Pittsburgh is the Latino Community Center’s signature bilingual after school and summer program for PPS Elementary and Middle School students. SOY Pittsburgh fosters academic advancement, cultural empowerment, social-emotional development, and family engagement - and, most importantly, provides a safe and positive bilingual space for our students. We were incredibly proud of our SOY students as they consistently showed us just how brave and persistent they were in attending school virtually all day, and then logging in to our virtual SOY Pittsburgh program regularly after school!
Total number of students served in Elementary School
34
Total number of students served in Middle School
10
ALAS (“Advancing Latinx Academic Success”) Pittsburgh
ALAS Pittsburgh, LCC’s high school and post-secondary success program, prepares the next generation of Latinx leaders for college and career success. ALAS offers personalized support to students as they prepare for a successful future. During 2020-2021, our Student Success Specialist provided direct, individual support - including help with financial aid and college applications, career guidance, referrals to services, and motivation to focus on the big picture - to a total of 76 students.
Total college applicants accepted
18
Total students supported
76
Virtual Tutoring
LCC’s Virtual Tutoring program was born out of needs created by the pandemic - and it has grown into a thriving program! Our volunteer tutors are carefully selected and matched to provide personalized, virtual academic support to students of all ages so they can tackle challenges and achieve academically. Meeting virtually has not stopped students and tutors from bonding - playing games, having “spirit sessions,” and enjoying their time together - while they focus on academics.
Total number of students served
34
Total number of tutoring hours provided
559
Adult ESL
Adult ESL classes at LCC focus on both developing beginning English language proficiency and building students’ confidence in themselves as learners. Our adult learners come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, and the sense of community created in our Adult English classes helped them take on the challenges of learning a new language and build their confidence. Our students logged in regularly to LCC’s Adult ESL classes, and the 9 groups of who completed their classes were proud to receive their certificates!
Total ESL students
112
Classes taught
195
Family Hotline
LCC operates the Spanish language arm of the Pittsburgh Learning Collaborative’s Family Hotline, which offers educational support to the region’s Latino families by addressing any education-related questions and concerns and providing personalized follow-up and advocacy. During the Hotline’s first year LCC received 434 education-related calls, showing the parents tremendous need for support navigating our complex and often confusing school system. Many of our callers requested assistance with school enrollment, language access, internet, and technology. Our Education Family Liaison works tirelessly to ensure that they feel valued, supported, and informed about their children’s education. She also connected 68 families with the internet: an essential for pandemic learning success.
Total calls received
434
Total internet connections
68
The LCC’s Education team would like to thank our wonderful partners!
A+ Schools
ARYSE
Boys and Girls Clubs of Western PA
Catapult of Greater Pittsburgh
CCAC
Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
Citizen Science Lab
Duquesne University Modern Languages Department
Hillman Family Foundations
Lawrenceville United
Literacy Pittsburgh
Los Sabrosos Dance, Inc.
ParentChild+
Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media
Pittsburgh Foundation
Positivity Project
STEM Coding Lab
University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Urban Education
Venture Outdoors
FAMILY
CENTER
Empowering Latinx families
On July 1st 2020, the Latino Community Center became the lead fiscal agent of the Latino Family Center - a process we accomplished entirely online - hiring, on-boarding, and training staff, and even launching our services virtually. LCC’s Family Services meet a range of needs through evidenced-based, bilingual programs, including: Hola Bebé early parenting support group, “Triple P” Parenting Classes, our Promotor@ Community Health Work program, our Covid-19 vaccine campaign, and wraparound Case Management.
The LCC also exists to bring our community together, and we ensure our families have opportunities to come together and socialize through events such as family fun nights, birthday parties, and community meetings. And on top of all that, we raised and distributed close to $200,000 in Emergency Funding for our families that did not qualify for any federal support.
At the beginning of the year, we expected to work with 100 families - but by June 30 we had seen over 550 families. Thank you to our devoted staff members who worked so tirelessly to ensure that our families’ needs are met!
Top 5 Family Center Referrals
Health care: 19%
Financial assistance: 12%
Legal assistance: 10%
Utility help: 9%
Public benefits: 8%
Our Outcomes
Average number of families served by Promotor@s de Salud monthy
52
Average number of families provided with Case Management monthly
90
Families served through “Triple P” Parenting
98
The LCC makes referrals to over 250 local organizations! Our main resources include:
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Housing Development Corporation (PHDC)
United Way of Southwestern PA
Allegheny Health Network
Consumer Health Coalition
SNAP
Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS)
Duquesne Light Company
WIC
Allegheny County Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP)
Dollar Energy
University of Pittsburgh Law School
UPMC Mercy
Case Management
The LCC’s case management team provided families facing a range of needs with comprehensive services and referrals to make sure our community members had access to food, health care, mental health care, housing, utilities, legal assistance, and all the other resources they need to thrive. Collaborations are critical to effective human services, and we are proud and grateful to partner with a network of over 250 local organizations in support of our families.
We encountered frequent requests for food, housing, and legal services - primary needs that our community has faced great challenges in navigating. Families sometimes have difficulty sourcing culturally appropriate food, and their challenges finding affordable housing reveal the rampant discrimination and show how it directly affects the Latinx community.
Despite the heaviness of working with families facing critical needs, our Family Services team continues to show up and support our community. We work to provide whatever support is needed - from helping a single mom flee an abusive relationship, get her life together, and now have a place of her own with a sustainable job to assisting families with corrections to birth certificates, access to daycare, and much more.
Promotor@s
This year, LCC launched our Promotor@s de Salud program, a recognized model that provides education, access, and preventative health support to our community. Also known as Community Health Workers, Promotor@s are friends, neighbors, and family members who work within their communities to promote health and well-being. Our Promotor@s make sure that members of our community have access to the services they need without being restricted by language barriers, limited income, fears related to immigration status, or lack of knowledge. This year they helped families schedule primary care appointments and dental check-ups, share information in areas such as nutrition and women’s health, and ensure that families have access to healthy food.
During 2020-2021, our Promotor@s visited, educated, and supported an average of 52 families per week! These included our Hola Bebe participants: mothers who have recently given birth, who attended a monthly peer support group and received weekly check-ins with one-on-one emotional support, basic needs assistance (such as diapers and formula), and referrals from our Promotor@s.
“Triple P” Parenting
“Triple P” is a curriculum that teaches parents Positive Parenting, a method that supplies tools and strategies for raising children in an environment that is safe, loving and predictable. LCC chose Triple P as our model for parent education because it has been proven effective by hundreds of studies of families living in many different cultures and situations. We launched our all-Spanish Triple P Program in October 2020, and family feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. LCC is the only organization in the state of Pennsylvania who currently provides these classes in Spanish by a certified instructor.
Covid-19 Champions:
In March of 2021, the LCC launched our Covid-19 Vaccination Campaign with our devoted team of Vaccine Champions - members of our community who encourage their neighbors, friends, and family to get vaccinated and provide accurate information about COVID-19 and the vaccine.
Community members partially or fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with help from our Vaccine Champions between March - June 2021
698
Our Family Services team would like to thank our key partners
Allegheny County Department of Human Services
Allegheny County Health Department
CDC Foundation
Triple P Positive Parenting
UnidosUS
United Way of Southwestern PA
MHP Salud
And the over 250 organizations we referred to this year!
ANNUAL EVENTS
Every year, the LCC hosts 2 major events to bring our community together:
Our annual Back to School Bash and our Christmas celebration, Navidad in Pittsburgh.
BACK TO SCHOOL BASH
In August 2020, LCC hosted a week-long virtual Back to School Bash celebration! The week began with a fun, online kick-off that included well-wishes from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Latinx community members, and LCC Staff and Board. During the week over 715 viewers attended a variety of virtual workshops such as “Preparing for Life After High School”, “Different Kinds of Schools”, “Rights of Students with IEP’s and/or Disabilities in Schools During COVID”, and a PPS Info Session. We rounded out this great week by delivering 252 bookbags and 100 food boxes to students’ homes, and hosting an exciting Bingo night for over 50 families!
Thank you to our partners and sponsors for supporting our Back to School Bash and showing our students how much you care!
Sarah Heinz House
A+ Schools
Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania
Homewood Children’s Village
BigBurgh
Pittsburgh Public Schools
The Pittsburgh Promise
Pittsburgh Admissions Collaboration
Penn State Greater Allegheny
Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC)
LaRoche University
World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh
APOST
Three Rivers Music Therapy
UPMC
NAVIDAD IN PITTSBURGH 2020
2020 was the inaugural year for Navidad in Pittsburgh! Since we could not hold an in-person event, LCC worked with donors to bring the magic to over 500 children and their parents across Allegheny County! The LCC strives to support parents and caregivers so they can raise healthy, happy children. We knew that the economic impact of the pandemic would make it difficult for many of our parents to purchase gifts for their children during the 2020 Christmas season, so we asked children to let us know their top 3 gift wishes - and our generous donors stepped up and went shopping. Gifts were delivered to parents so they had the opportunity to be the gift givers.
The LCC is so grateful to all who participated, whether by donating gifts or cash for purchases or delivering them to our families spread out across the County. Thank you for a successful 1st Navidad in Pittsburgh!
Thank you to our 2020 partners
The Switch Board
ALL for ALL
¡Presente!
Segal Family Foundation
Jetpack Workflow
PUMP
Your CFO
Colombia en Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
Best of the Bash Foundation - Charlie Batch's Organization
United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania
Steelers
PPG
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Community Meetings
During 2020-2021, LCC held monthly Community Meetings on Zoom, attended by up to 56 community members. Each meeting, a guest speaker delivered a presentation on a relevant topic (for example: tax returns and payments, Covid-19 vaccines, housing resources and navigation), LCC staff provided updates on our events and activities, and community members shared concerns and solutions. We are so happy to be able to provide resources and connections for our families - and a consistent time to come together even virtually to continue to build community!
Beverly’s Birthdays
This year in May, LCC launched our partnership with Beverly’s Birthdays. Every quarter, we hold a party for 50 children who celebrated their birthdays during the previous three months. Due to Covid-19 safety concerns, our first Birthday was a pick-up event where families were assigned time slots in which they collected party materials donated by Beverley’s Birthdays and packages of food, clothing, and bilingual books from the LCC’s donors. We love to celebrate with our families and look forward to fun and games at all the parties to come.
Family Wellness
This pandemic has been hard for all of us, which is why LCC made the decision to devote extra time to providing support and resources to ensure the health and wellbeing of our families. We provided 6 therapist-led virtual wellness groups, 4 focused on physical health and 2 focused on mental wellbeing, to a total of 31 participants.
Autism Support Group
During our community meetings, our families requested a Spanish support group for parents with a child or children on the autism spectrum. With the support of our families, the FISA Foundation, and Autism Urban Connections, the LCC launched this critical support group, providing resources and community for families navigating the spectrum!
Volunteer Spotlight
A Q&A WITH VOLUNTEER HANNAH S.
What inspired you to first start volunteering with the LCC?
I have just recently declared my major as Applied Developmental Psychology, and the teaching certificate I will earn allows me to teach kindergarten to 4th grade general education, and K-8th Special education. After finding my passion, I wanted to look for opportunities in the community to work with children! I had learned about the SOY Pittsburgh LCC from my advisor, and it sounded amazing! I loved hearing about the work they do for the kids, and I wanted to help and become a part of this community.
What keeps you coming back?
The one thing that keeps me coming back is the connection I am able to make with the students. It is so special and rewarding to work with children and watch them grow!! It is one of the best feelings in the world to see a child work hard and succeed at learning new concepts they are taught in school. I think that I impact their lives, but they also teach me a lot and impact my life as well. I know if I am ever having a bad day, going to see the kids at the LCC will cheer me up!
What would you tell other people thinking of volunteering with the LCC?
I would tell people thinking about volunteering at the LCC to absolutely do it. It is so rewarding and is a fun time as well, for the kids you work with, and yourself! Working with SOY Pittsburgh is a time in my life I will cherish. Everyone in the Beechwood school community is very warm and kind, and makes you feel welcomed. It is a great environment to be in!
About Hannah: Hannah is from northern New Jersey. She is a third year student at the University of Pittsburgh, studying Applied Developmental Psychology. In the future, her goal is to become an elementary school teacher, teaching 1st or 2nd grade. She would also love to have a focus on teaching natural sciences later on in her career! She loves learning about space, geology, environmental science, and weather. She thinks it would be great to share what she is passionate about with her students! She is excited for what’s to come in her future.
Organizational Milestones: Building a nonprofit organization that is transparent, stable, and strong
The Latino Community Center was built on a vision in which Latinx families can access the educational and preventative services that members of all ages - from infancy to adults - need to flourish, under a single roof. From July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, we added nine new programs that together enact that vision.
July, 2020: The Latino Family Center became part of the LCC, a transition that recognized our accomplishments as a Latinx-founded, Latinx-governed organization.
July, 2020: In partnership with MHP Salud, LCC launched our Promotor@s de Salud Community Health program, a proven method for improving the mental and physical health of community members through peer education and support.
July, 2020: We launched our early childhood education program, ParentChild+, which improves school and life outcomes through a home visiting model that focuses on early literacy, school readiness, and effective parent-child interaction.
July, 2020: In partnership with A+ Schools and fellow members of the Pittsburgh Learning Collaborative (PLC), LCC launched the Spanish-language version of PLC’s Family Hotline.
August, 2020: We expanded our SOY Pittsburgh after school program to South Hills Middle School.
October, 2020: In partnership with “Triple P” Positive Parenting Program, we launched Spanish parenting classes to provide Latinx parents of 0-18 year-olds with strategies to build positive environments for the long-term success of their children.
February, 2021: We hired a Food and Nutrition Specialist as part of our Promotor@s de Salud program to provide families with information about and access to healthy food.
March, 2021: In partnership with the CDC Foundation, LCC launched our COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign.
May, 2021: In collaboration with the Department of Human Services, we launched Hola Bebé, the only Spanish-language version of the “Hello Baby” program in Allegheny County.
May, 2021: Our Promotor@s launched our Women’s Health Series, an educational panel to bring together Latinas and provide education and support in areas related to women’s health.
May, 2021: With support from the FISA Foundation, we planned and launched a support group for Latinx parents of children on the autistic spectrum.
2020-2021 Financials
Income
Expenses
Please Note: The 2020-2021 financials presented in this report are currently under audit.
Our Vision Continues
Every year since our launch, the LCC has grown, and we continue to do so. In 2022, we are turning 5! We hope that you will celebrate our birthday with us - stay tuned for more information.
Next year, we look forward to reporting on new areas of growth and expansion. Current projects include:
Avanzando through College: A new partnership with UnidosUS, our Avanzando through college program ensures that first generation college freshman and sophomores overcome obstacles and perform to the best of their ability.
SOY STEM at Arsenal Middle School: This year, in partnership with Sarah Heinz House and with the support of the PPG foundation, we launched a STEM-focused iteration of our SOY Pittsburgh program at Arsenal Middle School.
Want to support our work so we can continue our mission of empowering our growing community?
Donate today and sign up to become a monthly donor!
Save the Date!
Check out LCC’s 2022 events:
Back-to-School Bash
SUMMER 2022
LCC’s Annual Back-to-School Bash event will return next fall. Look for updates on how you can support our students as they prepare for a new school year.
Navidad in Pittsburgh
December 2022
LCC will provide Christmas gifts to Latino children throughout Allegheny County. Help us ensure every child has a joyous holiday season!