This year, we are seeing an unprecedented amount of in-depth and thoughtful coverage of Latinos not only in print and on stage but on television.

CNN’s “Latino in America”: Soledad O’Brien Reports

On October 21st and 22nd, CNN aired the two-part television documentary “Latino in America.” It is the longest, and most in-depth, piece of non-fiction programming the network has ever produced about Latinos.

“Latino in America” is anchored by Soledad O’Brien. Born of an Afro-Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father, this mixed-race media maverick has teamed up with producer Rose Arce to document Latino-American life from Pico Rivera, California to Park Place in New York City.

The airing of “Latino in America” has given occasion to activist groups to shine a light on the way the network portrays Latinos in their everyday programming. Some groups say that the only time Latinos are mentioned in CNN’s weekly line-up is on Lou Dobbs’s controversial talk show.

However, with the airing of “Latino in America”, viewers now have the option of hearing something other than Dobb’s often anti-immigrant voice. Night one of the documentary is titled “Meet the Garcias,” and chronicles the very different lives of eight different families with the surname Garcia. Night two is entitled “Chasing the Dream.”

The White House throws a Latino Party: “Fiesta Latina”

Just nine months after coming to D.C. to throw their Latino Inaugural Gala, cultural politicos Marc Anthony, George Lopez, and Eva Longoria Parker were back in the District last week for the “Fiesta Latina” concert the White House held to close out Hispanic Heritage Month. Hosted by President Obama and aired on both PBS and Telemundo, the sixty-minute musical program featured the music of Anthony, Gloria Estefan, Aventura, Thalía, Tito “El Bambino”, and Chicano rock stars Los Lobos.

In an interview with the New York Times, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos stated that, “It’s a political event in that we’re here,” gesturing toward the White House. “But I think it’s more just to celebrate the culture.”

In his opening remarks, President Obama stated that “…though it’s constantly evolving, Latin music speaks to us all in a language we can understand about hope and joy, sorrow and pain, friendship and love. It moves us, and it attempts to make us move a little bit ourselves.”

And at the end of the night, he did. The evening closed with President Obama dancing a little cumbia sway, on camera and on the record.

The Dancer Judge: Justice Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor is not only the first Latina to sit on the Supreme Court, but also the first Justice who loves to dance. Besides dancing mambo with Esai Morales at the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts gala, rumor has it that Sotomayor has been out and about in Washington, D.C.’s salsa circuit, rubbing shoulders with the young politicos that she has set such a stellar example for.

The 2Cooltura project was created in 2006 for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the Department of Justice. Thanks to a generous renewal grant from the Department of Justice, SRF and Hispanic Communications Network have come together again to help Hispanic youth get out of and stay out of gangs.

The 2009-2010 phase of 2Cooltura will utilize the project’s already established branding but tailor the media, outreach, and website to two specific geographic locations and cultural populations: Montgomery, Maryland and Wake County, North Carolina.

The Latino gangs of Maryland are primarily composed of second-generation Latinos, while the Latino gangs of North Carolina are mostly first-generation immigrants. Localizing both projects will enable us to streamline the program message while also catering to the specificities of each community in order to have a more acute impact.

For a taste of what this year’s media products will look like, check out our original 2Cooltura PSA video with Grammy-nominated rock en espanol band La Secta Allstar:

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We have come a long way since our founding in 1979; what began as a dream in New Mexico is now an international reality with headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C.   We started out using radio and film to communicate social justice ideas; we now use television, the Internet, and mobile text messaging to mobilize communities.

In 2009, we will continue to act as an information broker between the government, the non-profit sector, and the communities that they serve, with a consistent focus on results and impact.  We have built a solid foundation for our next 30 years of service, and look forward to working with our many partners, donors, and community members to continue making our mission a reality.

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According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) an estimated 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year. Victims are often lured into trafficking networks through false promises of good working conditions and high pay as domestic workers, factory and farm workers, nannies, waitresses, sales clerks, or models. Once in this country, many suffer extreme physical and mental abuse, including rape, sexual exploitation, torture, beatings, starvation, death threats, and threats to family members. It is believed that most victims who are trafficked are isolated and remain undetected by the public because 1) the strategies used by the perpetrators isolate victims and prevent them from coming forward, and 2) the public and the victim service providers have only recently become aware of this issue and may not be familiar with how to recognize or respond to trafficking victims.

To help stem human trafficking in the US, the Self Reliance Foundation is working with its media partner Hispanic Communications Network to design a Spanish-language public awareness campaign with support from the US Department of Justice – Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).

This high-impact multimedia campaign is launching in early November 2009. The campaign will pilot in the Washington, DC metro area. Produced in Spanish, this effort will support local human trafficking programs and services, and also help to increase detection and reporting of cases of human trafficking among the local Spanish-speaking population.

To complement the media campaign, SRF will collaborate with the Hispanic-serving community and faith-based partners to disseminate the campaign’s public education materials, and implement interpersonal grassroots outreach efforts to engage “Good Samaritan” members of the greater Hispanic community in the campaign. Our strategy two-pronged strategy is designed to increase the number of community members who understand how to identify human trafficking victims, are aware of the purpose and services of the local service providers, and ultimately are willing to work with the these groups to identify and also rescue and assist human trafficking victims.

To learn more about human trafficking please visit the US Department of Justice’s Online Description.

To meet the dramatic changes in U.S. demographics and the need for more woman scientists and engineers, the project has expanded programming into Latino communities nationwide via the SciGirls en Espanol initiative working in collaboration with the Self Reliance Foundation.  SciGirls en Espanol provides Spanish-language print and video resources, leader training, and grants to nine existing Latina-serving organizations to help encourage greater engagement in STEM.

The SciGirls project encompasses an upcoming PBS TV show, a website, and a resource provider for educators, club leaders and mentors who are working with girls doing science. SciGirls outreach energizes club meetings, science camps, classes, and other events tailored for girls with DragonflyTV videos that feature girls doing authentic inquiry, along with exciting science activities based on these videos. SRF staffer Alicia Santiago helped select segments that would resonate with young Latinas, oversaw translations for video and print and helped provide insight on how SciGirls content could best serve the Latina community.  The production staff at KLCS TV (a noncommercial educational television station licensed to the Los Angeles Unified School District and a member PBS station) was instrumental in helping repackage individual SciGirls video, collaborating to develop a format that would best serve middle school Latinas and their families.

For more information, or to request review copies of SciGirl en Español materials, send an email to scigirls@tpt.org or visit the SciGirls website.

The radio programs developed by SRF provided interesting information about genetics, with the goal of peaking the curiosity of listeners to learn more about the human genome.  Some programs also featured interviews with Hispanic researchers discussing the discoveries of the human genome project.

A complementary website was also developed to make information about the human genome more interesting and accessible to the general Spanish-speaking public.   Issues related to genetics and bioethics were emphasized, like the importance of creating a record of family health history. Visit the website at www.nuestrogenoma.org

Click here to listen to a Genoma Humana radio spot

The main platform, housed at the website www.accesohispano.org includes four different interfaces directed at four different target audiences:

• English (designed to inform stakeholders about issues facing the Latino community)
• Spanish (designed to reach Spanish-language dominant Hispanics with relevant articles about issues that affect them, in addition to links to helpful websites or organizations)
• Service Providers (developed to help community-based service providers across the country better serve the Latino community by providing tailored information and resources)
• Promotores (to help Acceso Hispano’s network of community-based promoters better serve the community)

The different sections of the Acceso Hispano website include features to help facilitate communication with the public including newsletters; discussion forums; calls for articles from the public; SMS texting capacity; events calendars; comments; email forms; visual search features and more.

The website is designed to complement Acceso Hispano’s toll-free bilingual telephone hotline which provides free information and referrals to callers around the country related to job training, ESL classes, scholarship opportunities, health care options, voter registration sites, domestic violence shelters, and a vast array of other services requested by the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community.  To ensure that the community has access to the culturally-sensitive community based services that they need at any time of day, Acceso Hispano is developing a searchable web-based database of providers.  Service providers can easily update their information online, search the database to help make referrals for their clients, and the general public can conduct instantaneous searches for the specialized services available in their own communities.

Click here to download a brochure about Acceso Hispano.

The campaign garnered over 86 million media impressions via television; over 44 million media impressions via radio; over 42 million media impressions via the Internet; and over 450,000 media impressions via pre-film commercials in movie theaters.

Why Internet Safety? One in seven children in the United States receives a sexual message via Internet each year.  48% of mothers admit they don’t know what their children do online.  Nearly 7% of 12-14 year-olds have received a request for a nude photo of themselves and 14% of 12-14 year olds have participated in a sexual chatroom.  Among teens these numbers rise substantially.  Over half of all teens receive requests for personal information about themselves, 54% have private online conversations with strangers via instant messaging, and 77% have a personal online profile viewable by anyone.

The television spots produced by SRF include:

Depredadores Encuentran a Tus Hijos por Internet:  An announcement targeting parents, encouraging them to supervise and get involved in their children’s Internet use to keep them from predators.

No Arruines Tu Vida: An announcement targeting potential Internet predators, educating them onthe consequences of publishing child pornography or targeting minors via the Internet.  This is particularly important for immigrants coming from countries with different definitions of “minors” and predatory behavior.

The Truth Behind the Screen: A three-part series directed at parents to raise awareness of the importance of supervising their children’s Internet activity.

A website was also created to support the campaign at www.protegelosahora.org by iKeepSafe.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2007-JL-FX-K009 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions expressed here do not represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Llama y Vive is a free, confidential 24-hour spanish-language Trafficking Hotline that connects trafficked persons directly to AYUDA’s services. The campaign includes print media and TV PSAs featuring Ricky Martin. AYUDA asked SRF’s Acceso Hispano team to manage the trafficking hotline and link potential cases of trafficking to AYUDA for assistance. SRF’s outreach specialists managing the Accesso Hispano helpline or Linea de Ayuda began to field calls in response to the campaign.  The following is the story of one of the calls received:

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Ernesto Solis is from a small town in Nicaragua, and currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His family is still in Nicaragua, including his little sister who is the youngest of their large family. Ernesto came to the U.S. to work and live but remains the caretaker of his family, providing both financially and emotionally for them.

In July of 2008, Ernesto’s family called him to say that his youngest sister had been abducted along with another young girl from their town. The family was distraught, didn’t know where to turn and asked him to help find her. He began making calls, organizing prayer chains and talking to anyone and everyone who might listen and provide advice on what he could do.

Several months passed and he felt helpless, but he continued to make calls, console his father, and ask others for help. One day he saw a brief television announcement that said, “…if you need help or need somewhere to turn in a time of crisis call the Linea de Ayuda.” Ernesto picked up his phone and called the hotline, and spoke with Jairo-one of Acceso Hispano’s hotline specialists. Jairo listened to the story-a familiar one that he had heard several times before– of a young girl abducted and a family member desperate to find her.

Jairo gave Ernesto several referrals to both U.S.-based groups and international organizations that could potentially help him find his sister. Jairo made the first call to advocate on behalf of Ernesto, which started the ball rolling in the search for his sister. Ernesto kept in touch with Jairo over 3 weeks, keeping him up to date on his search. Jairo told the rest of the Acceso Hispano team that he had a good feeling and that he was sure it was only a matter of time until they’d find her.

On a Friday morning, Ernesto called Jairo with elation in his voice.  His sister had been found in Guatemala by the authorities working on the case. Ernesto’s father and family in Nicaragua were amazed that even being so far away, he was able to solve the family’s crisis. He took a day off of work the following week to go into Washington DC to thank the Acceso Hispano team in person, so appreciative of the emotional support he had received and the referrals which led to finding his sister. Fortunately she is still alive, though very ill after having suffered a horrible and unimaginable ordeal. Ernesto’s family is relieved and grateful for the blessing of having her with them again.

If you would like to support the Acceso Hispano team in their outreach work, please click here to make a donation.