Highlighting the Library’s Collaboration with Fuerza Latina
By Annaclaire Crumpton
Amazing resources, events, and programs grow from the Library’s strategic partnerships and collaboration. Recently, our partnership with Fuerza Latina has brought hundreds of individuals into vaccination clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Founded 20 years ago by immigrant parents of students at a local bilingual immersion school, Fuerza Latina provides resources and services to the Latinx community. The organization provides a phone hotline, tailored events and programs, and resources for housing and immigration.
In the past, the Library has also partnered with Fuerza Latina for Día de Muertos celebrations through community altars and collaborated on clinics providing resources for immigrants and DACA recipients.
We had the opportunity to interview Fuerza Latina’s Growth and Leadership Coordinator, Jesus Castro. A DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) recipient, Jesus moved to Fort Collins in 2008 and spent his senior year of high school at Fossil Ridge High School. A dynamic community organizer, Jesus is set to begin studying theatre at Colorado State University this year. He’s worked for many different community organizations geared towards the Latinx community and has been involved in Fuerza Latina’s work for four years.
How would you summarize Fuerza Latina’s work?
A really important aspect of our work is our hotline. People can call the hotline and leave a message about any issue. It could be related to injustices at work, losing DACA status, or needing help connecting to someone in the school district.
Volunteers run the hotline and all of them are Spanish speakers or bilingual. Even though we don’t have a lot of money, we have a lot of resources and are able to guide people in the right direction.
The hotline is also very informative for us. A lot of the time, we base our events and programs on what our community is telling us about – from housing and work issues, to immigration issues.
What’s an example of an issue or theme you’ve heard through the hotline that has turned into specific programs or events?
Housing is one! During the pandemic, a lot of people got sick or were out of work and couldn’t pay for their rent. Because of this, we started to collaborate with other organizations to connect individuals experiencing these issues with lawyers to make sure they know their renting rights.
We also had a DACA clinic nearly 10 years ago that was based on the number of calls we were receiving. Over 200 people showed up and the event lasted until past midnight even though it was set to end at 3 PM!
Tell us a little bit more about your work with Fuerza.
I love working with Fuerza because I get to support my community and not only provide services, but create growth and empowerment opportunities.
As an organization, we respond to what’s happening within the community, but we also have space to be ourselves while we build that community.
How have Poudre Libraries and Fuerza Latina collaborated in the past?
It’s such a pleasure to work with the Library. It comes so naturally to work together because we both care about the community so much.
We had opportunities to work on vaccine clinics with the Library through the pandemic. We’ve collaborated in the past on DACA clinics. Right now, we’re hosting a quarterly resource fair with the Library and ISAAC.
It’s such a natural collaboration – we’re all equals and it’s always so easy. Everything we do is to elevate our community and every time we bring issues of concern to the Library, they’re always very supportive.
Tell us a little bit about our past vaccine clinics.
We had several clinics over the pandemic with anywhere from 300 people at the largest clinic to 100-200 at smaller vaccine clinics. The community trusts the work that Fuerza and the Library do. It helps that we’ve been able to build trust through these collaborations.
Both Fuerza and the Library are very well known. In particular, the work that Ludy and Africa do [librarians in the Library’s Community Outreach department] is well recognized.
What is one of the biggest benefits of Fuerza’s work?
Our work is by the community for the community. What makes us very unique is that our committee members that “call the shots” are members of our Latinx community. We have allies but they have different roles within the committee.
Our staff all come from different backgrounds but we all represent parts of the community we serve. We understand each other and know that we are all learning together.
Do you have questions about Fuerza Latina’s work or resources? Email jesus@fuerzalatinafoco.org or explore their website today!
