Mila Laschkewitsch, chairwoman of the Hispanic/Latino Community Advisory Council, describes the work of the northwest suburban organization as “picking up the things that get through the cracks.”
That’s what the group will be focusing on Friday at its second conference, “Building Partnerships With the Hispanic Community: Immigration and Welfare Reform Revisited.” The council’s official mission is to improve the health and well-being of the Hispanic/Latino community in the northwest suburbs of Cook County.
According to Laschkewitsch, the council was started about five years ago at the urging of the Cook County Health Department to address health needs. Members, who are representatives of more than 40 area organizations, meet bimonthly to exchange information about the community, assess its needs and design intervention programs. The goals of the group include educating Hispanics and Latinos about available heath and social services.
“One of our goals is to keep the community informed, passing along the information we have gathered throughout the year and anything new that is happening to all the organizations we work with,” Laschkewitsch said.
The conference was designed to expedite that process. Anyone can attend, but it is targeted toward organizations that serve the growing Hispanic/Latino community in the northwest suburbs. “One person from an organization will touch maybe 500 immigrants,” she said.
“If we can get all of this information out to the public, we will consider it a success,” said Laschkewitsch, who is bilingual services coordinator for Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights.
Last year’s conference addressed trends and issues; this year’s focus is immigration and welfare reform. Objectives include clarifying immigration and welfare reform issues; providing information on demographic trends, domestic violence and DUI; and offering networking opportunities.
Featured participants include Sylvia Puente, director of public policy, Latino Institute in Chicago; Cook County Associate Judge Brendan J. McCooey; and Jose Rico, suburban organizer of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Protection, a Chicago-based organization that works on behalf of immigrants and refugees.
Sherry Mathews-Huizar of Omni Youth Services is project coordinator for the Wheeling and Prospect Heights Community Resource Centers and vice chair of the council. She said the event will be broken into two parts, with the first being an overview of what has been happening in welfare and immigration reform and how that’s affecting the community. “That’s a real big draw for the municipalities and the municipal governments and the movers and shakers of the suburbs,” she said.
Afternoon sessions are tailored to people working in the communities, according to Mathews-Huizar. She described these sessions as “giving some concrete information on how to deal with the new issues that are being brought up with the immigration and welfare reform.”
Last year, representatives of 150 organizations attended, and organizers are hoping for an equal or greater number this year.
“We’re trying to extend what we started last year, which is to educate our service providers and our professionals about our growing Hispanic community,” explained Nancy Rock, a social worker with Des Plaines School District 62. She said the conference offers people “some networking opportunities and some resources so they can better serve that community.”
The Hispanic/Latino population is “a very hidden community,” said Kathy Kohlstedt, adult education specialist with Even Start, a family literacy program based in Hoffman Estates that serves Schaumburg, Palatine and Wheeling Townships. “I know within our district, we have a lot of social workers and other people working with a lot of Hispanic families (who ask) questions we can’t answer. I think (the conference) will be really good to answer a lot of the questions that have come up.”
Kohlstedt noted that those questions include what services are available and how to apply for citizenship, now that the rules have changed. “There’s a lot of misinformation,” she said.
According to Rock, “Almost 25 percent of our school population comes from families where English is not spoken. That includes Latino, Russian, Polish, Vietnamese. But the large majority of that–probably 95 percent–is Latino. People are just beginning to realize that they’ve got a growing multicultural population, and that (it) has needs different from what they’re used to.”
Debunking misconceptions about the Hispanic/Latino population is another objective of the conference, according to council member Gonzalo A. Escobar, extension educator in the Rogers Park office of the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “We have to break these stereotypes, and I think the conference is a good way to break them–to really get what Latinos are,” he said.
Escobar also sees the conference as a way to address unmet needs of the Hispanic/Latino population. “You have schools where the Latino population is growing, and you don’t have teachers that are bilingual,” he said. “Or you have social service agencies that don’t have bilingual personnel. Or sometimes you only have one person, and there’s a lot of work for that person.”
Through the conference, said Hilda DeJesus, volunteer coordinator and interpreter with CEDA Northwest in Mt. Prospect, “We can really get the right information; and when the people are in need, we can orient these people. We will be better prepared for them when they come to us. We will be more comfortable when they have questions.”
“I hope it gets out the information about the continued presence of the Hispanic community in the northwest suburbs and how important that is,” said Omni Youth Services’ Mathews-Huizar.
Rock hopes the conference will help area professionals “begin to look at working with their different populations more on a prevention basis than a knee-jerk reaction kind of basis.”
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“Building Partnerships With the Hispanic Community: Immigration and Welfare Reform Revisited” will be held from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday at Forest View Educational Center, 2121 S. Goebbert Rd., Arlington Heights. Registration fee of $35 includes lunch. For more information, call 847-808-1454 or 847-718-7722.
