FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dusti Gurule
303-572-0013
dusti@latinainitiative.org

Denver, CO – The Latina Initiative (LI) receives status as a self regulating 501c3 nonprofit organization from the Internal Revenue Service on August 11, 2006. Founded in 2002, the Latina Initiative operated under the fiscal sponsorship of Mi Casa Resource Center until 2005 when the organization began its own journey to build organizational infrastructure and capacity.

LI works to solidify the immense political potential within Colorado’s growing Latina population through grassroots action. LI is a non-partisan voter outreach, mobilization, civic engagement, and advocacy organization whose mission is to cultivate, support and maintain the civic involvement of Latinas in Colorado. LI is the premier nonprofit increasing civic engagement of the Latina community.

LI’s organizational/strategic goals are that:

• The Latina community will be able to speak articulately and act effectively to influence the decision and policy makers about the issues that effect their families and communities,
• LI will have mutually beneficial, deliberate and defined partnerships, to influence the decision and policy makers, with organizations working on issues effecting the Latina community,
• LI will be recognized as the resource for information, support, education on getting involved in issues impacting the Latina community,
• LI will have the funding to support the strategic goals and have established diverse and stable funding sources, and
• LI will be recognized as fully functioning, effective, efficient, credible and accountable 501 c3.
  

The low voter turnout and civic participation of the Latina/o community directly affects the decisions being made about numerous issues including health care, the economy, education and the environment. When a significant population is being left out of the decision making process and does not have power to affect the decision makers the policies that are created do not represent the state of Colorado. Often, disenfranchised populations are either disregarded or tokenized by those groups traditionally involved in the electoral process. The role of LI is to act as the culturally relevant trusted advisor to increase civic engagement and therefore increase the power of the Latina/o community to affect the issues that affect their communities.

To address this lack of connection to and understanding of the mechanics of politics, the LI aims to reach thousands of Latinas through a variety of proven Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) strategies to increase long term voter and civic participation rates among this demographic. This campaign will expand upon the community visibility and voter outreach efforts of the 2004 and 2005 Latina Initiative voter mobilization to increase the civic participation of Latinas in Denver, Boulder and Adams counties.

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