Mexican Education Foundation and masany.org

While doing research for my new updated www.zarela.com web page, I discovered Angelo Cabrera and his work though Congressman Vann’s office in New York City and became painfully aware of the tremendous dropout rate and woefully low college graduation statistics for our Mexican-American youth. It became an immediate necessity for me to help in any way possible particularly in helping them raise funds.

We are the fastest growing minority group and it is imperative that we prepare our good people for leadership and success. Though times are tough, even a small donation of $20.00 is welcome and, if you have suffered the loss of a job, perhaps you would like to volunteer for these worthwhile organizaions that are in the process of melding. Below is a short description of their work but visit their website for more complete information.

Founder/Director of MexEd

THE MEXICAN MENTORSHIP PROJECT OF THE MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS ALLIANCE AND MEXICAN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION OF NEW YORK (MASA-MEXED) MASA-MexEd, a nonprofit organization, seeks to promote educational attainment and community leadership among Mexican immigrants and their children, including the undocumented. The primary vehicle for accomplishing this mission currently is the Mexican Mentorship Project. MASA-MexEd’s mission is compelling for several reasons. First, Mexicans are New York’s fastest growing ethnic group, and now number over 500,000, up from only 40,000 in 1980. They will number about 550,000 in the 2010 Census. Mexicans have recently surpassed Dominicans as the group accounting for the largest number of births in the City.

Second, while about a third of Mexican girls and a fifth of boys are upwardly mobile, they have the highest percentage of 16-19 year old youth not graduated and not in high school in the City – 47% versus 22% for Puerto Ricans, 18% for African Americans and 7% for whites. Even worse, we are losing huge numbers in high school itself: while 95% are in school at age 14, only 25% are in school at age 18-19, a drop of some 70%. This rapid growth in population coupled with the startling educational statistics make the education of Mexican youth in New York City an urgent priority.

The Mexican Mentorship Project seeks to address these issues. The Project stems from the collaborative work of Angelo Cabrera, a CUNY student who founded MASA, and was a hunger striker in a successful effort to gain the right for undocumented immigrants to get in-state tuition at CUNY and SUNY; and Robert Smith, a CUNY professor whose research on the Mexican community in New York over the last twenty years has been funded by, among others, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. Cabrera and Smith share the same approach: there are some significant causes of poor Mexican educational outcomes that we can address with relatively simple interventions. These include a lack of information about college, a lack of technical/institutional support for simple processes such as applying to college, and more difficult issues, such as micro-cultures within schools, that can also be changed. A key issue that must be addressed in these outreach efforts is that most Mexican immigrants arriving in New York in the last decade are undocumented, by some measures more than 90%. Most believe erroneously that they cannot attend college, which is not true. Others become stymied by the application. Still others come to believe they cannot succeed or that “Mexicans don’t go to college” as one told us. We believe this can and must be changed, and that we have developed programs that can do so. The Mentorship Project proceeds along three parallel tracks, which we summarize very briefly here. First, it seeks to give the information about college to students and their parents via community outreach events in schools with lots of Mexican students and at community groups. Second, the Project has a mentorship program and an after school program, with sites at Washington Irving High School and in a church in the South Bronx. Third, the Mentorship Project has developed strategic alliances that will enable it to both multiply its impact and to become more financially stable over the next three to five years. Primary among these are CUNY, the Mexican Consulate, and several community organizations. These interventions, taken in combination, have helped many MASA-MexEd students to achieve their academic potential, and their American Dream. We invite you to participate with us. You can find out more information about us, or donate, at www.mexednyc.org/about or www.masany.org. You can also reach Robert Smith at 917 608 1822 and Angelo Cabrera at 646 632 02464. Thank you.