Educacion Para Nuestro Futuro Founded By Escuela Bolivia

As one of the largest immigrant gateways in the United States, Northern Virginia is home to more than 700,000 foreign born and nearly 475,000 Latino residents. Edu-Futuro is committed to guiding disadvantaged families to greater opportunities, and incorporates the following goals in all of our work:

● Instill in youth and parents the value of education, intellectual curiosity, and possibility of pursing a college degree.
● Empower students to achieve higher education and successful careers and build the skills to assist them on their journey.
● Motivate and teach parents to become more involved in their children's lives, especially by engaging with their children's education.
● Provide additional resources to help immigrant parents create nurturing home environments, achieve self-sufficiency, and break the cycle of poverty.
● Empower youth and parents to put into action the skills they have developed in our programs and become advocates for themselves, their children, and their communities.
● Help families achieve stability through individual case management services.

Edu-Futuro takes a Two-Generation programmatic approach that allows us to impact parents and children in the same household simultaneously, always working towards the goal of helping families break the cycle of poverty.

The Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) serves Latino and immigrant students. The majority of our students live in low-income households (85%), and many have never considered college as an attainable goal. ELP combines academic activities, leadership workshops, life and job skills seminars, and a civic education with off-campus field trips for students to participate in robot competitions, speech competitions, college visits, career panels, and civic engagement activities. Students are also paired with mentors who provide individualized guidance. Each stage of the ELP moves youth closer to attaining their greatest academic and career potential. ELP STEM Robotics Clubs help elementary and middle school students develop interest and competencies in STEM subjects; ELP I helps high school students develop leadership and life skills and learn the importance of a college education; ELP II helps high school seniors achieve their goals for higher education and careers, mentoring them through the college and financial aid/scholarship application process; and ELP III, currently in the pilot phase, helps ELP II graduates attending local colleges successfully navigate college and their first jobs.

Parent Empowerment Services (PES) work alongside the ELP programs to develop the confidence and skills of parents. Immigrant parents face hurdles that prevent them from being involved in their child’s educational lives and succeeding in the workforce, including lack of knowledge of the U.S. school system, computer/technology literacy, and English language skills. Through workshop series and individual services, PES train immigrant parents how to navigate the U.S. school system, advocate on behalf of their children’s education, provide a nurturing home environment, and obtain the skills needed to find new or better jobs. We offer curricula that teaches immigrant parents how to become partners in their children’s education, how to strengthen relationships with their children, and how to advocate for positive change. We also provide Workforce Development Services to help them obtain better jobs, offering free training and one-on-one counseling that helps immigrant parents build computer, technology, language, financial, and job skills. All PES programs are delivered in both Spanish and English and provide childcare and snacks when in-person. Edu-Futuro also offers case management services to assist parents and caregivers with financial, immigration, and family issues where more complex interventions are required. During the pandemic, our staff is helping immigrant families understand and complete applications for emergency assistance and providing direct financial aid to struggling families for food, rent, and utilities.

No other community-based organization in Northern Virginia provides the comprehensive, bilingual, and bicultural services offered by Edu-Futuro. Today, we serve more than 2,000 youth and adults annually, and our households represent 55 countries from around the world. Demographically, our families identify as Hispanic/Latino (60%), White/Caucasian (12%), Black/African American (9%), Multiracial (8%), Asian (4%), American Indian (2%), or other (5%). Based on the Community Development Block Grant Income limits, 84% of the Arlington and Fairfax County households served by Edu-Futuro in FY 2019-20 were considered Extremely Low Income (48%), Very Low Income (26%), or Low Income (10%).

Edu-Futuro has a distinct advantage in understanding the unique needs and family dynamics of our beneficiaries. Over 79% of our staff are immigrants or come from immigrant families, and 93% of staff members are fully bilingual. In recognition of our success applying the Two-Generation approach in Northern Virginia’s immigrant communities, the Aspen Institute invited Edu-Futuro to join the Ascend Network: a national alliance of practitioners, philanthropic leaders, policymakers, and researchers advancing Two-Generation approaches for whole-family outcomes.

Edu-Futuro is fortunate to have a wide array of collaborators contributing to our work. In 2019-20, we benefitted from formal, system-wide Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) and Arlington Public Schools (APS), and this year expanded to the City of Alexandria through an MOU with Alexandria City Public Schools and the City of Roanoke through a partnership with Virginia Tech Roanoke Center. Edu-Futuro’s is an active participant in such stakeholder groups as Arlington’s Superintendent Advisory Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Student Concerns, Arlington Safety Net, and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

Edu-Futuro works with a variety of other community partners that provide volunteers who serve as mentors, career panelists, and workshop presenters for our programs. We welcome new partnerships with community groups and corporations who are interested in volunteering and are launching a virtual tutoring program for students that will engage volunteer tutors remotely. In a significant step towards organizational growth, Edu-Futuro became one of only 12 lead AmeriCorps agencies in the Commonwealth of Virginia in FY 2020-21, and has nearly tripled the number of AmeriCorps members in our staff, from five to 14. This important advance has given us the capacity to nearly double the number of students participating in our life-changing college enrollment and financial aid/scholarship program for youth, ELP II, from approximately 45 students in past years, to 85 in FY2020-2021.

Despite the tremendous disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, our 47 ELP high school graduates this year were collectively offered $2,478,605 in financial aid and scholarships for their first year of college, and $5,540,652 in four-year renewable college scholarships and financial aid. In a time of extraordinary stress, this is a remarkable accomplishment that speaks volumes about the dedication and hard work of our students, as well as for their determination to follow their dreams of a college education.

Edu-Futuro is also proud to report that the ELP has been recognized as a Program to Watch for 2020 by Excelencia in Education—the only national effort to identify and promote evidence-based practices that help accelerate Latino student success in higher education—and will be included in Excelencia’s 2020 What Works for Latino Students in Higher Education Compendium.

During the pandemic, Edu-Futuro has become one of the largest providers of emergency assistance to Northern Virginia’s immigrant families, providing case management services to 900+ families, and disbursing $500,000+ in direct financial aid. We will continue to respond the crisis by helping immigrant families obtain needed assistance.

Community stakeholders are the most important factor in Edu-Futuro’s planning. We strongly believe that decades of systemic racism and inequality can only be overcome through individual and community empowerment; we will continue to expand our capacity to offer programs focused on education, leadership skills, financial stability, civic engagement, and workforce development to empower immigrant families to achieve their highest potential. Edu-Futuro is also working to expand ELP to increase our impact on systemic change through more attention to college attainment. One step towards this is hiring a full-time ELP III College Support Specialist to provide on-campus mentorship and support to help our students who are currently attending college graduate, find employment, and use their leadership and civic participation skills to transform their communities. Another key objective is to continue implementing our Civic Engagement Curriculum as a permanent component of programs for students and their parents. Through workshops and civic engagement activities, our Civic Engagement Curriculum helps our beneficiaries understand how local, state, and federal governments work; how key issues impact their lives; and most importantly, how to advocate for positive change.