ATLANTA — If you walked into the Latin American Association building on Buford Highway Thursday morning, you would've been greeted with music, food, refreshments, and a brand new spot dedicated to families and students.
It was a celebration because of the organization's unveiling of its new Learning Hub. It's decked out with computers and pamphlets for different universities and trade schools.
Eli Velez, Managing Director of Youth Services for the Latin American Association proudly made the announcement through the microphone. He spoke with 11Alive afterwards.
"We want to provide information to our community about pathways to be successful in life," he said. "We want to show kids that it doesn’t matter what they want to do in life, there’s a pathway to be successful and we want to show you that process and that space is the learning hub."
The space is dedicated to helping students and families with finding a pathway to a university and/or technical school, as well as exploring scholarship options. All of that help will be offered for free.
Ana Flores, who works with the organization's youth department, shared her story on why she wished there was something like this while she was graduating high school.
"I didn’t have anything like this growing up – my family are immigrants from Honduras and my mom came over pregnant with me and I was born in the states. It was tough growing up not knowing all the information – so I think because of that struggle we don’t want our students to struggle," she said.
The organization explained that many first and second generation immigrant students in metro Atlanta come from neighborhoods and families with lower incomes. They hope this will help overcome that hurdle.
"A lot of our families and our parents are coming from different places of the world and they might not have the knowledge that they want to share with their students and we want them to be successful and to know that there are different pathways to college whether you’re undocumented, if you have DACA, if you’re from here," Flores said. "It gives them an open door for them to know I can go here and somebody will help me and gain that support that I didn’t have when I was going to college."
Velez said the space was made possible thanks to the DeKalb County School District, and a combination of grants, foundations and events to raise money.
He said that their team of about five people will also be going to remote locations, including different schools to explain their services to students.
"We're super excited with the opportunity and the momentum we have right now," he added. "We have a lot of kids that are lost in the process, they are unmotivated and we want to be the motivation for them."
The money raised also helped provide grants to several students Thursday morning. One of them was Cross Keys High School Senior Michele Molina-Cuevas, who received a $1,000 scholarship.
"It means a lot to me because as everybody knows college is expensive," she said. "Especially coming from a minority background, we don’t have that many resources and being the first person in my family to attend college we don’t have that much of a knowledge on scholarships or what we could do."
Molina-Cuevas will be going to Georgia State University in the fall and hopes to become an immigration attorney. She said she believes her goal would have been easier to achieve with a center like LAA's hub.
"I didn't have centers like this one growing up so it motivates me to help younger Latinos," she added.
Velez emphasized that their services will be made available for students of all backgrounds, not just Latinos. The goal is to serve at least 3,000 students this first year with the hope of reaching more in the future.
"We're a non-profit. We welcome anybody that wants to find a pathway to be successful in life," he reiterated.