Ivan Parra spent eight years helping to build two Latino community organizations in Durham County, North Carolina, - the El Centro Hispano community center and from this, the statewide Latino Community Credit Union. Now an organizer for HELP, he's working with Latino congregations in Charlotte to identify the most pressing community needs and implement a plan for resolving them. The approach is one Helping Empower Local People (HELP) has employed many times before - on initiatives ranging from senior services, to education equity to jobs and wages. But HELP's foray into the Latino community required someone who speaks the language, who could develop critically important relationships within the tight-knit community, and who understood organizing. Enter Parra, who also is working at the state level to help Latinos have a bigger voice and achieve greater participation in the state's political and economic agendas. The group is planning a large-scale training for participating congregations and will give attendees the tools they need to begin organizing, establish organizations in their own communities, create economic development movements, conduct power analyses of their communities, and fundraise.

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