'Our mission is to empower our youth': Latinos in Action to mark 25 years of operation

OREM — As an immigrant from El Salvador, José Enriquez said it could be tough as he grew up, unfamiliar with American culture and still learning English.

"I struggled with the language. I just struggled to adapt," he said. "But I had to learn the language and really understand the system. It was tough to navigate it without any social or cultural capital."

Living in the Los Angeles area, mentors helped him navigate his new life, ultimately steering him to Brigham Young University in Provo, where he attended as a scholarship student. Ultimately, he got into teaching, first at Timpview High School in Provo, where he launched what would become Latinos in Action, a program designed to empower Latino youth that has expanded to more than 250 schools around the country.

It's been a quarter of a century now, and on Friday, Latinos in Action, launched in 2001, is holding what it dubs a 25th Anniversary Gala in Salt Lake City, expected to draw around 400 students in the program, mostly from Utah. It's a big milestone for the group, now based in Orem, and ahead of the event, Enriquez spoke about the growth of Latinos in Action and its future.

"It's been 25 years of incredible growth for our youth and our community, and I love that people can see it and respect it," Enriquez said. "To me, that's more important than the 25 years. It's 25 years of showing the populace who we really are and who these kids really are."

Latinos in Action now offers more than 300 classes, all of them elective, at more than 250 schools, mostly in Utah and Florida but also in 14 other states.

'They were just not involved'

Enriquez launched the first class that would become Latinos in Action in 2000 at Timpview as a wrestling coach and teacher there, fresh out of college. He saw Latino students at Timpview grappling with the same issues he had, and mindful of the mentoring that had helped him, went to the school principal with the idea of creating a leadership class for them.

"Athletics, choir, band, extracurricular, AP (and) honors (classes) — our Latino youth were just not in those spaces, and I always wondered why," he said. "They were just not involved as I felt they should."

His offering started as a Spanish class for native Spanish speakers, but he folded in lessons about notable Latinos from around the United States, instruction about leadership and more. He aimed to instill in the students a sense of "how brilliant they really are," he said.

He thought more deeply, and the class morphed the next year into a leadership class, adapting the Latinos in Action moniker. Tutoring younger kids and service became central elements of the program, which also focuses on college-readiness, financial literacy, professionalism and self-awareness.

"I took a step back and I thought we could teach them about Latino heroes, or we can create our own Latino heroes within our own system," he said. "I knew that that's the only way to change the system — to help our young people see themselves in a different light and in the process have others, the populace, see them in a different light."

Latinos in Action expanded to 10 Utah schools by around 2010, when Enriquez turned it into a stand-alone, non-profit organization, quit his job at the time at the Utah State Board of Education and started working full-time to promote the initiative. That's when growth, spurred by funding from grants, donors and sponsors, took off.

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"Our hope is to have (students) go into any profession and understand and know exactly what they need to do and make a difference in those communities," said Enriquez, chief executive officer of Latinos in Action. "Our mission is to empower our youth to lead and strengthen their communities."

All are welcome to take part in Latinos in Action, but he said the program is geared principally to the Latino population, whether they are first-generation newcomers to the United States or have deeper roots here.

"We want to make sure to move the needle within that community, but anybody can join. It's not exclusive," he said.

'Rooted and Rising'

The COVID-19 pandemic and "the political environment" have hampered growth, but Enriquez says the group's mission is as important as ever. As the Latino population in the United States grows, he sees Latinos in Action growing as well.

The featured speaker at Friday's gala, themed Rooted and Rising, will be José Hernández, who worked the farm fields of California with his family as a kid and later became an astronaut for NASA. But Enriquez said one of the key aims of the event is to highlight the many students who have gone through the Latinos in Action program and made marks in their own communities.

"We're celebrating these alumni who are chemists, business leaders. We have teachers. We have pilots. We have dental hygienists. You name it — they're in so many different professions," he said. "We want to celebrate everything that we've done in 25 years, but also those alumni who are making a difference in their communities."