A Letter From Our Founder & Executive Director
Dear friends of the Latino Community Center,
It is with great excitement (and relief) that I write this welcoming letter to you from our new home in East Liberty. As I walk through our new space, I see our team members laughing, talking, brainstorming, and interacting with one another. I also see families walking in for appointments and community members bringing in families who are in difficult situations needing support. Most importantly, I hear the sounds of a center that is back and very much alive.
It has taken us some time to arrive at this place. I do believe the pandemic changed us (“us” meaning LCC but also “us” meaning everyone, everything). How could it not? We had to learn how to work differently, be creative in our problem solving, all while growing the team and becoming an organization of over 35 employees.
Therefore, this past year it was primarily about getting to learn who we have become as an organization.
We did this by going through a Strategic Planning process with Bonner Consulting and conducting stay interviews with our team. Both of these processes required vulnerability on our part, but it was only through these processes that we learned so much. We learned that our work is impactful AND that we need to be more clear in communicating what we do and what we don’t do.
We learned to listen to our team and that internally, we have team members who are eager and willing to step up to the plate and lead.
When I look back at this year, I see defining moments. What I mean by that is that there were several instances where decisions needed to be made, and I made them using my gut, my heart, my instinct, and by listening to the team. It didn’t always make sense, and the answers were not always the most common sense, but when those 4 aligned, I knew that it was the right decision to make.
Furthermore, I am grateful to our board, especially our Board Chair Dr. Belkys Torres, who stepped in to support the organization during my maternity leave. I am grateful to the LCC team for all of the hard work they do each and every day and for giving me the trust to lead us. As a new fiscal year begins, I am excited to continue to bring life into the Center and continue to make it a safe and welcoming place for our community.
Rosamaria Cristello
Executive Director
Rosamaria with her two children. Rosamaria became a mom of 2 during this Fiscal Year
Our Impact: At-A-Glance
PROGRAMS
Community Health Workers
At the beginning of this year, LCC's CHWs started offering a Home Visiting Program for expectant parents and families with kids under two. Since then, CHWs have performed 178 home visits to 65 families in 27 zip codes. Our goals are to connect families with services and resources and offer culturally appropriate information and guidance from prenatal until the child is two years old.
We continue offering support for the community to access health and social services. Our Health Care Navigators worked every month with 25+ families. The primary referrals were to dental services, free and income-based clinics, and public assistance programs like SNAP, WIC, and Medical assistance.
In partnership with Vision to Learn, which provided free vision screenings, eye exams, and glasses, we assisted 44 kids.
We connected 47 adults to SANARAI, a nonclinical mental health platform that provides mental health services to Spanish-speaking clients.
During this year, our team received many training sessions, like COVID-19, trauma-informed care, mental health, etc. They also completed the Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) training, a tool to help assess and track a child's development.
We are thrilled to share that three of our CHWs completed the PA certification for CHW.
Families supported
546
ParentChild+
This year, LCC’s second full cohort of our early childhood home visiting program, ParentChild+, was completed. We celebrated our second graduation in June with laughter, pride, and even a few tears after so many hours spent together learning and growing!
ParentChild+ graduated 9 young learners, who then enrolled in kindergarten with the assistance of our PC+ team. We were also excited to add another Early Learning Specialist to our ParentChild+ team, and 10 additional families who completed their first cycle of PC+
Total home visits
939
Total families served
19
SOY (Supporting Our Youth) Pittsburgh
We celebrated more than 5 years of our Afterschool Bilingual Program, SOYPgh, at Beechwood Elementary School in the 2022-2023 year! This means that it was our first time celebrating students who started with us as kindergarteners and are now graduating from our program and heading into middle school!
The program ran daily, Monday through Friday, allowing us to support the students (Kindergarten-5th) academically, socially, emotionally, and culturally.
Many partners were involved in the programming, and this year Open Field joined the list! Students loved to learn to play soccer and enjoyed scrimmages.
One of the special activities this summer was when the students created “Alfombras”: Guatemalan Carpets using colored sawdust. We can’t wait for these to be displayed at our Fundraising Event in October!
Students served in Elementary School
35
Total days in session
193
Special Field Trip
Simmons Farm
SOY (Supporting Our Youth) Community
We very successfully launched a version of SOY PGH that our community has been asking for called SOYPgh Community based in East Liberty and we continued SOY PGH in Arsenal Middle School! This program ran Monday through Thursday at Arsenal Middle School and Saturdays at our location on Baum Blvd. Every Saturday, we were so grateful to have students from elementary and middle school who live in the area and provide them with cultural, artistic, social-emotional and creative exploration programming.
During the Summer Break, 30 students joined what we called SOY Summer with a variety of activities that included STEM, arts projects, dance classes, cultural empowerment, cooking classes, social- emotional skills workshops, field trips, and more. We want to thank Attack Theatre and STEM Coding Lab for collaborating with us!
Total students served
62
Total days in session
50
Education Support
This year was a year of many changes and challenges. We were recovering from the pandemic and students were returning to full-time in-person school, and catching up on school classes, which presented an increase in the assistance families needed.
The Education Family Support team assisted all of the families and referrals who called through the Hotline with questions about navigating the education system. Examples include language access, academics, school enrollment, Magnet Program enrollment, teacher communication, Internet connectivity, and others.
The Education Support Specialists also participated in various training sessions throughout this year to continue preparing ourselves and gaining knowledge to assist our families who have children with special needs.
Families assisted
709
Total calls received
771
Families helped with internet connection
55
SOMOS Pittsburgh
SOMOS Pittsburgh provides students with academic, social, and emotional support through both our mentoring and tutoring programs. Each of our programs offers personalized support to students as they navigate their academic journey, through a careful matching process and in-depth analysis of each student’s individual needs. Our tutoring program caters to students of all ages ranging from Kindergarten through 12th grade, and tutoring pairs are now meeting both virtually and in-person as we begin transitioning away from exclusively online tutoring. Our mentoring program caters to older students including middle and high school students.
Students served
34
Tutoring hours provided
306
ALAS (Advancing Latinx Academic Success) Pittsburgh
Our Advancing Latinx Academic Access for Success (ALAS) program is LCC’s high school and post-secondary success program, currently supporting students across Allegheny County in achieving their goals for the future through our GenOne, Avanzando Through College, and Nuestro Futuro program offerings. Each of these programs offers personalized support to students as they prepare for a successful future, whether that be applying for college, seeking financial aid, exploring career options, or requesting assistance with post-secondary goals. We make sure to provide the information and opportunities that students need to decide how they wish to continue their education or begin their careers. Not only do the students receive personalized assistance on their journey, but they and their families also receive the wrap-around services they need so that both the youth and their parents can concentrate on furthering their education. Finally, youth involved in Nuestro Futuro were placed, through Learn & Earn, in different organizations that were able to provide paid work experience to 13 Latinx Youth.
Total of students supported
74
Total workshops
35
Students place in Summer Internships
13
Triple P - Parenting Classes
The Positive Parenting program has been very successful this year. We have managed to double the number of parents registered and the number of children impacted. We have also opened a new course related to the recent discoveries in neuroscience, based on the book "The Yes Brain". We also managed to consolidate the support group for parents, while promoting mental health and self-care. We look forward to continuing to support families with the behavioral development of their children this year!
Total registrants
108
Total workshops
286
Children impacted
209
Case Management
The LCC Case Management offered families a wide range of services and referrals to ensure that people of our community had access to food, housing, utilities, legal counsel, and all the resources they required to succeed.
Our community encountered notable challenges this year, with the main ones being access to: food, shelter, and legal services. Within this landscape, language barriers have posed hurdles, impacting families in their quest for culturally appropriate food, effective communication, and self-advocacy. Despite resilience, there have been occasional struggles in expressing needs. Affordable housing, a critical need, is often hindered by the discrimination our community sometimes faces. Yet, it is important to highlight the community's enduring strength and determination in the face of these challenges.
Our dedicated family services staff consistently demonstrates their commitment to being a valuable resource for our community, embodying resilience and compassion. While we may not be a crisis center, we remain steadfast in our efforts to provide comprehensive support. We take pride in empowering individuals, such as assisting single mothers in leaving challenging situations, facilitating necessary revisions to documents like birth certificates, offering court accompaniment, and aiding in the establishment of child support. Our strengths lie in addressing various needs, from navigating complex paperwork to helping single mothers find suitable childcare centers and so much more.
Families supported
981
Welcome Center
Throughout the year, the Welcome Center successfully delivered a range of immediate services. These encompassed, but were not confined to, providing food boxes to address food insecurities, distributing Goodwill gift cards for essential home items or clothing, operating an in-house Family Closet to support families arriving in Pittsburgh with minimal belongings, and managing a Diaper/Formula bank dedicated to assisting families with children under 2 years of age. The Welcome Center's dynamic services aimed to address diverse needs promptly and effectively.
Families assisted
1,578
NEW families
416
The LCC’s team would like to thank our wonderful partners!
DHS
Diaper Bank
Goodwill of Western PA
United Way of SWPA
PHDC
Partner4Work
JP Morgan
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 2022, we went back to PNC Park to celebrate our annual Back-to-School Bash!
With a day filled with fun and learning, thanks to our amazing education partners.
… and thank you to our partners for supporting our Back to School Bash and showing our students how much you care!
Amachi Pittsburgh
Assemble
CCAC
Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
Crossroads Foundation
Falk Laboratory School
Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania
LaRoche University
Pittsburgh Promise
Pittsburgh Public Schools Early Childhood Department
Pittsburgh Public Schools ESL Department
PPG
Reading is Fundamental
Sarah Heinz House
STEM Coding Lab
The Peal Center
UniSound
University of Pittsburgh Dental School
NAVIDAD IN PITTSBURGH
One of the major events for the Latino Community Center is Navidad in Pittsburgh. In 2022 we were able to hold it in our very own, newly opened facility. This offered the families the opportunity to see the new Center, interact with their children by playing games, doing activities, enjoying food and music, and of course, Santa Claus. !
During the event, we were able to offer the parents brand new gifts for their children that had been donated to the Center just for this. Our staff and volunteers spent countless hours getting ready for this event and in the end, the smiles and gratitude of the families made it all worth it.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Community Meetings
This year, we held 4 community meetings with various wonderful guest speakers who discussed topics about cyber security and health. Our meetings were held both virtually and in person. We look forward to having more in-person meetings in our new home!
Beverly’s Birthdays
Beverly's Birthdays has been an amazing partner! In the past year, LCC has hosted 3 different events since relocating to East Liberty. As part of the event, the birthday child can visit Beverly's Bus to pick out some cool gifts while also receiving a Birthday Cheer Box customized to their age. Additionally, siblings of the birthday child are welcome to join in the party, which always includes music, food, treats, and games!
Hola Bebé
Seven Hola Bebé workshops happened during the year! The workshops were in person on the third Tuesday of the month; we invited parents and their kids to join us for lunch while they learned about different topics and shared their own experiences. A total of 54 moms attended. We talked about Breastfeeding, WIC, First Foods; and we got to celebrate Mother’s day all together.
Family Fun Days
Our Family Fun Days have been a huge success! In the past year we have hosted 5 different themed events. Themes such as Noche de Cultura, Trick or Treat, Valentine’s Day, Ice Skating, and Mother’s Day have brought not just families closer, but also the whole community. Events are held either at our LCC office or a different location. A total of 463 participants have attended our Family Fun Day events.
Support Group
This year, we opened up the Autism Support group to every parent or caregiver that has a child with special needs, so we could reach more families. We have been working with different professionals and experts in different subjects, such as education, psychology, and health. This group also went on two field trips and a neurodiversity festival in partnership with the organization Evolve.
2022-2023 Financials
Expenses
Our Vision Continues
This upcoming year will be an exciting one for LCC! Among the many reasons why is the much-needed return of in-person programming in our new space in East Liberty.
This year we will also:
Work on key items that came out of our Strategic Planning Process: This will be noticed and seen in the form of focusing more on our education programming, succession planning, and clarifying our messaging.
Planning and kicking off our inaugural Annual Fundraising Event: For the first time in our 5-year history, LCC will hold an annual fundraising event! Stay tuned for more details and information!
CHW’s Certification: Our Community Health Workers will become certified CHW’s in the State of Pennsylvania!
Implementing Nuestro Futuro: A new internship and entry-level career program for young adults (age 16-24)
Thank you for reading our annual report!
If you 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 future events:
Navidad in Pittsburgh
December 2023
LCC will provide Christmas gifts to Latinx children throughout Allegheny County. Help us ensure every child has a joyous holiday season!
You can support by donating a gift through our Amazon Wish List!
Back-to-School Bash
SUMMER 2023
LCC’s Annual Back-to-School Bash event will return next summer. Look for updates on how you can support our students as they prepare for a new school year.