About Us
Casa Latina is an educational and cultural center located in Hampshire
County, Massachusetts. Casa Latina was established more than 38 years
ago by area Latinos to represent, celebrate, and advocate for the Latino
community. Today, Casa Latina promotes Latino empowerment and cultural
pride through its popular education programming, its community
activities, and its access services, which include a medical
interpreting service and an information & referral program.
Casa Latina’s popular education programs bring groups of low-income
Latino community residents together to explore the causes behind the
serious hardships that face local Latinos. Casa Latina also carries out
a variety of community activities that allow local Latinos to celebrate
our history, to develop a shared awareness of important health and
social issues, and to advocate for our needs and dreams. Through Casa
Latina’s access services, local Latinos in need of social and health
services, interpretation, translation, and advocacy learn to navigate an
often-complicated - and primarily English-speaking - system of service
provision.
Casa Latina is of as well as for the local Latino community. Latino
community members are actively represented at all levels of its
programming and leadership. Latino youth, Latina women, Latino elders,
Latino fathers - Casa Latina provides opportunities for all sectors of
the community to participate in its work.
Too often, Latinos are represented to the society at large by our
community’s struggles. At Casa Latina, Latinos are recognized for our
strengths, our potential, and our cultural values. Casa Latina’s work
is pro-active rather than reactive and focuses on formulating collective
solutions to social issues.
Casa Latina’s presence and programming in the community are intended to
facilitate processes of change: Change in the lives of marginalized
Latinos, change in the overall well-being of our community, and,
eventually, change in the societal structures that keep many local
Latinos poor and disenfranchised. Casa Latina is a place where Latinos
come in from the margins, in from a society that does not value our
language or our customs, and in from a system that keeps us ignorant of
our own oppression and our own capacity. At Casa Latina, Latinos work
together towards a brighter future for our families and our community.
Casa Latina carries out this work with the energy and commitment of a
small paid staff, an active volunteer Board of Directors, and a network
of community volunteers.
Although in past years Casa Latina has received a substantial portion of
its funding from state agencies, today the majority of its operating
funds comes from local and private sources, including individual
community members, Amherst Community Development Block Grant Program,
Amherst Human Services Funding Program, Community Foundation of Western
Massachusetts, Frank Stanley Beveridge Foundation, Haymarket People’s
Fund, Highland Valley Elder Services, Hispanics in Philanthropy,
Northampton Community Development Block Grant Program, Office of
Minority Health HIV/AIDS Regional Resource Network, Tufts Health Plan
Community Partnerships, and United Way of Hampshire County.