The local Latino community has lost one of its greatest advocates.
El Centro Latino, the Carrboro-based Latino advocacy group and resource center, announced its closure Wednesday due to a decrease in donations and grants, leadership turnover and the economic recession, according to a press release.
More about El Centro Latino
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El Centro officially opened in 2000 and has since offered programs such as employment assistance and English as a Second Language classes to an average of 150 clients per month, according to its Web site.
The nonprofit made $211,831 in revenue in 2008, according to IRS forms.
The press release states El Centro Latino’s Board of Directors is not dissolving the organization and will hold a meeting in January to discuss El Centro’s future and how best to serve local Latinos.
El Centro Latino founder Mauricio Castro, who now works with the N.C. Latino Coalition, said there is no question that these services are just as needed today as they were needed nine years ago.
Leadership turnover
Many nonprofits are struggling in the current economic recession, proving why running a nonprofit requires tremendous commitment and leadership, Castro said.
He said everyone who has held a leadership position in El Centro had good intentions but were not equipped with what they needed.
Since 2001, there have been at least five different executive directors.
“Running a nonprofit requires being able to look ahead at the next year or two,” he said. “If someone thinks this is a job that can be done from nine to five, they are totally misled.”
Carrboro Alderman Randee Haven-O’Donnell also identified high turnover in leadership as a key issue El Centro faced, saying strong leadership is directly related to successful funding.
Serving a growing group
According to a 2008 U.S. Census Bureau report, 6.3 percent of Orange County’s population is of Hispanic/Latino origin.
Carrboro had the county’s highest Hispanic/Latino population with 12.3 percent in 2000, according to U.S. Census data.
With such a significant Latino population, UNC sociology professor and immigrant advocate Judith Blau said the effects of El Centro’s closure will be immediately felt by the Latino community.
Blau, who runs the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center in Abbey Court, a predominantly Latino housing complex, said El Centro was like the Human Rights Center’s big sister. She said the many programs it offered will be a loss for the community.
“But they also provided something more complicated than that: social inclusion,” she said.
Jakelin Bonilla, co-chairwoman of Campus Y’s Linking Immigrants to New Communities, said El Centro was providing its clients with weekly updated job openings. This was especially significant due to the recent unemployment crisis, she said.
“At this moment, people will have a lot of questions about resources, employment, food stamps … things that are high necessities right now,” Bonilla said. “I feel like there will be a huge void of information.”
Both Blau and Bonilla said they will do their best to fill that void, but when it comes to offering services like maintaining a job database, neither have resources like El Centro’s.
“El Centro Latino did a lot for just being one organization,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fill their shoes, but I see us collaborating more with other organizations in the area to do what El Centro did.”
Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
