Mission Statement
The mission of Uniendo Voces Latinas is to empower both documented and undocumented immigrants by harnessing the strength of community.
We achieve this through political education, resource provision, and community-building initiatives, focusing on bridging language and cultural barriers within the Latino community.
Our Vision
This summer, launched a social impact project in Prince George’s County - Uniendo Voces Latinas: A Latino Political Empowerment Initiative. The mission of Uniendo Voces Latinas is to empower both documented and undocumented immigrants by harnessing the strength of community.
We achieve this through political education, resource provision, and community-building initiatives, focusing on bridging language and cultural barriers within the Latino community.
The goal is to increase political knowledge and political action within communities of Spanish-speaking individuals while expanding voter rights. Through community outreach, we are pursuing three policy changes to municipal charter
Allow non-citizen voting in municipal elections
2. Reduce the age requirement to run and vote for Municipal Office
3. Make the municipality a sanctuary city.
Law changes are the hardest task in this project, given the time it takes to pass new policies. Understanding such limitations, one of the goals would be to develop a network of Latino leaders to continue the work of this project beyond the program’s running time and expand it to other parts of the county and the state. Along with a network of leaders, we will develop a toolkit for any municipality to be able to amend its charter with these policy changes.
The population of Latinos and Hispanics across the nation has increased rapidly. In Prince George’s County, the Latino and Hispanic population has grown from 14.9% to 20.9%, according to the 2010 and 2020 census, respectively.
Despite the large number of Latinos in these municipalities and the county, there are very few Latino elected officials. The current elected officials do not reflect these communities, depriving them of the needed representation.
Although many elected officials and organizations try to provide resources and include the Latino community, Latinos are hard to reach. Many Latino families are in the US to work hard to improve their lives and those of their loved ones, whether those loved ones are here in the US or back in their home country.
Latino and Hispanic families are constantly working; long work hours lead to little time left for political engagement, preventing them from practicing their civic duties, especially at the local level. They feel that politics won’t change things for them; only hard work will.
However, Latinos in their home countries are very community-oriented, proving that they are intuitively socially responsible and capable of applying similar practices to their communities in the US.
The toolkit will include the different legal paths that can be taken, the pros and cons of each iteration of the amendment, and the background research proving the need for voter expansion.
Our approach is to reach the Latino Community in their neighborhoods and bring politics to them rather than expecting them to come to politics. You must go to where the community is.