District 14 Town Hall -Hispanic Heritage Month 9.29.2021

We had an excellent Town Hall last week celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month! Monica Guerrero from Centro Sol and Angelo Solera from Nuestras Raices joined us to talk about their work, the impact of the Latino community in Baltimore, our challenges, and what comes next. Click here for the Facebook Live video, click here for the You Tube video.

Monica Guerrero is the co-Executive Director of Centro Sol. The organization was started by Johns Hopkins to work toward health equity for our Latino community. Monica described the work they are doing on mental health, since our community has such a stigma against asking for help.

Angelo Solera is the founder of Nuestras Raices which means Our Roots. The organization works to uplift and promote our heritage, and also reconnect youth to our heritage. In Baltimore, there are people from over 28 countries that make up our Latino community. The diversity of the languages, culture, and art are on displace this weekend at Fiesta Baltimore, the festival at Patterson Park that features music, dancing, art, food, and more. The parade of Latino Nations will begin at 2pm.

Monica is inspired by so many other Latinas that do the important work to serve our community including Gina Baez with the Baltimore City Health Dept, Giuliana Valencia Banks from Esperanza Center, Lucia Islas from Comite Latino and so many others. Angelo is inspired by Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr.

We talked about the challenges our community faces. Monica and Angelo agreed that the City needs to hire more Hispanics to serve our community in front-facing agencies like finance, water billing, and more. There are not enough Latino teachers, and educators in our schools despite the fact that our student population is about 17% of the entire City’s public school population. It is more than just the language, but also understanding where a lot of us are coming from to help break barriers and build trust.