 Home-School Connection Program (H-SCP)
The Home-School Connection Program (H-SCP) promotes the school success of immigrant children and further our understanding of the school adaptation process.
Context: Our target population is the Latino community in Massachusetts. The Latino community is the largest minority in the U.S. The Latino community has grown 50% in the State of Massachusetts in last years and children are the majority of the population. Many Latino children have school adaptation problems due to the cultural differences and expectation between their home and school. So the level of drop-off or failures increases due to lack of support. The H-SCP promotes the school success of Latino elementary school children.
Brief Description: The main components of the program are assessment of children and mediation to strengthen the communication between teachers and parents. Many of the children who participate in the program have school adaptation problems due to the cultural differences and expectations between their home and school. By visiting children and parents in their homes we are able to inform parents about school activities, educational expectations, and ways in which they can support their children. Recommendations to teachers try to help teachers understand children’s behaviour in the context of their family’s values. The Program reaches children and families from 2 elementary schools in Somerville, MA and 2 Elementary Schools in Chelsea, MA
Latino Diversity in Massachusetts School System
(Improving public policy is not enough to reduce historical discrimination and barriers to integration).
A complete set of strategies must be in place to promote diversity, understanding and integration. Early childhood strategies and a system of integrative activities among parents, students, authorities and teachers can produce better spaces for a better school environment to Latino legal immigrants. Hispanic citizens, resident and legal immigrants of the United States face great challenges in the education system.
US school system (particular in Massachusetts) has a bad design in terms of diversity and integration strategies. With respect to the Latinos (now 30% of US population), language barriers and miscommunications difficult the integration of children and their parents to the school community. Some of the Latino communities feel some discrimination and they cannot find a proper space in the school to an integral development of their potentials. The system in Massachusetts only have formal rules of non-discrimination but it fails in the development of specific strategies and activities for teachers, parents and children to achieve more integration and promote diversity. Our proposal is simple; We want to evaluate the Massachusetts Elementary Public School System to see the policies related to integration and the barriers from Latino communities to be an active part of the school community and we want to develop specific proposals to improve the school system and increase tolerance, diversity and integration of the Latino Families into the system. We want to apply those proposals to one or two pilot communities (Medford, Everett or Somerville in Massachusetts), only in elementary public schools. We will base our approach understanding the cultural, language and social limitations of the Latino communities and the actual failures of the formal educational policies. From there and working with Latino parents, children and their professor we will develop several proposals to increase integration and promote diversity.
 Promoting Integration (Environmental Justice): Environmental Justice program in Latin America in a coordinating effort with US students.
Latin America, from Mexico through the Southern Cone of South America, is one of the regions of the world with major historical and contemporary trends of inequity, exploitation and environmental degradation. We want to introduce US students to environmental justice research and comparative environmental studies. Our project will gather information about racism, social inequities, indigenous rights and environmental injustice in Latin America, with special emphasis in the Andean Region. We want to develop proposals for better strategies in each one of the countries and develop a regional proposal to address the problem in the region, using US experience and environmental justice movement development experience. We will review the general information from Latin America and specific research in the Andean Region (Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia), Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico. This project will produce an innovative research with respect to the environmental justice situation in the Latina America region and the possible approach to deal with the environmental injustice issues and a regional framework proposal.
 US and Latin American Network
The activities of Consortium include activities to support organizations in the US and Latin America that work for the social sustainable development, democracy, human rights, education and judicial reform. We dedicate a good effort in our area of promoting good governance. Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development. The Millennium Declaration explicitly recognizes good governance as one of the most crucial requirements in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Our programs have as goals strengthen democratic processes and promote the rule of law and accountable, effective government institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. We achieve these goals by facilitating effective collaboration among US and Latin America public, private, educational, and non-profit stakeholders and providing support to built better institutions.
 Indigenous groups
Our plan is to develop an integrative and comparative analysis between Indigenous Peoples in US, Canada and Venezuela. We want to review advances and challenges of indigenous peoples in those countries with special emphasis of current crisis, political/social environments, similarities/differences and possibilities of networking. We want to contribute to introduce possibilities of dialogue and knowledge interchange among different indigenous leaders in Venezuela and in the US. We also wan to develop a bi-national Indigenous Leadership Forum, bringing together Indigenous intellectual and leaders from both countries to evaluate possibilities of networking and knowledge transfer.
Community Journalists
In Latin America, constant change is the motto. New emerging political leaders breaking news are changing socio/economic and political perspectives in the region a matter of seconds. Is the information on these pivotal events flowing on time and reaching the right audience in the right way? The local and international media’s role has always been important in the flow of information between governments and the community. Community Media has been a revolution in the US, an unique experience that need to be promoted in other countries. The community media gives voice to a range of groups and members of the community. There are talk shows, educational programs, cultural shows, sports segments, local history programs, children’s shows, cooking shows, and a variety of music programs. Consorcio has identified a communications gap between the journalists covering topics related to socio economic issues in Latin America and the academic world, as well as the foreign press. This is why Justice Consortium is attempting to close the gap with a series of two-day workshops in which Latin American journalists and researchers, professors and country analysts will come together to discuss actual issues in the region. As home to some of the most cutting edge politics, academics, consulting and technology, Boston is the ideal city for such a forum. Some of the topics and issues to be discussed by country include: quality of government statistics, choice of international information sources, understanding of the social justice, demographics, general communications, relationships between foreign and local media, between public and private local media, access to researchers and country analysts abroad, community media among others.
2006 Report
Latin American Chapter of the World Movement for Democracy
The main objective is continuing all the efforts to promote the formation of a Latin American under the umbrella of the World Movement for Democracy, coordinate de “Comite Organizador del Capitulo Latinoamericano (Provisional Steering Committee) and coordinate the efforts (planning/fundraising) for the November Latin America Regional and Preparatory Meeting of the WMD Chapter. www.democracialatinoamerica.org
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