This Program Is Empowering Young Latinas With L.O.V.E.

ALatinas On The Verge of Excellence

“Today is about selecting a vital that we love,” Espinosa, 36, announces. She’s addressing a 6 mentors and 7 mentees attending L.O.V.E.’s weekly event during The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem.

It’s a Friday afternoon nearby a finish of a propagandize year. But a high propagandize students who had been rowdily expecting a weekend only moments progressing turn totally focused when Espinosa speaks. Everyone starts deliberating a disproportion between a vital and a thoroughness when a mentee abruptly asks what happens if she’s not certain what she wants to investigate in college.

“When we go to school, you’re never wasting your income or time,” Espinosa responds, calming a tyro that many people are uncertain when they enroll. “Everything we learn will assistance you!”

Claudia Espinosa speaks to a L.O.V.E. mentees and mentors during The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem.

Espinosa combined L.O.V.E. 3 years ago to coach immature Latinas. Since then, she’s implemented a module in 3 New York City schools, operative closely with a Young Women’s Leadership Network in low-income, infancy minority communities in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn.

This fall, Espinosa expects to enhance a module to a sum of 7 schools, including a initial in a Bronx.

“L.O.V.E. is like a machine, creation certain that immature girls can perform their intensity — and by potential, we meant their biggest dreams,” Espinosa told The Huffington Post.

Though a module has grown in a brief duration of time, Espinosa’s tour unequivocally began 15 years ago, when she changed alone from Cali, Colombia, to a U.S. to follow her lifelong dream of apropos an FBI agent. She complicated English for dual years and became a personal tutor — a pursuit that still keeps her afloat financially and helped account her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in debate psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But by a time graduation came around, Espinosa satisfied a FBI was not for her.

While she contemplated her future, Espinosa worked as a advisor during Life Is Precious

“[I was] operative one-on-one with a girls, 13, 14, 15, adult to 17 years old,” Espinosa said. “Girls came in referred from a hospitals saying, ‘Yeah, I don’t wish to live anymore.

Espinosa (right) speaks with a mentee during The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem.

Hispanic girls in high propagandize are some-more expected than their non-Hispanic peers to have attempted suicide13.5 percent of immature Hispanic womanlike students pronounced they attempted suicide

Working as a self-murder advisor took an romantic fee on Espinosa. “The girls would opening with me, though we would take that and have dreams or nightmares with it each night,” she said. “So we quit a job. But afterwards we said, ‘I have to do something.’”

Espinosa went behind to school, enrolling in a master’s module in open administration during New York University, where she worked with expertise to rise a commander module and curriculum for L.O.V.E.

The module was creatively designed to span 10 to 25 students per high propagandize with womanlike college mentors from NYU, Columbia University and a City University of New York. Ideally, college mentors share interests with their mentees and promulgate frequently to assistance beam them from ninth class to graduation. During after-school L.O.V.E. meet-ups, they listen to guest speakers or plead investigate tips, college applications, domestic assault and other topics.

While a module was primarily dictated to aim Latinas, L.O.V.E. is open to immature girls of all backgrounds. In fact, many of a East Harlem mentees are black, including Lauren Drumgold.

The 18-year-old will enter Bates College as a biology vital this tumble and was recently respected alongside dual other seniors during a special L.O.V.E. graduation ceremony. Drumgold, who hopes to turn a veterinarian, pronounced she initial started removing vehement about attending college and study abroad during a L.O.V.E. mentoring session.

Lauren Drumgold, 18, during a L.O.V.E meet-up.

The L.O.V.E. module can be equally eye-opening for a immature women who proffer their time. Amanda De La Torre, 26, is one of a program’s newest mentors and recently warranted a master’s in aloft preparation and tyro affairs during NYU.

“You can speak about it and write about what people are struggling with and barriers to aloft education,” pronounced De La Torre, who is Mexican-American and mentors a 15-year-old of Ghanaian descent. “But we don’t see that unless you’re indeed in a classroom and concerned with them.”

“[Barriers can be] small things, like ‘What does a vital mean?’ Not even meaningful a vernacular is one — generally for students whose relatives immigrated here and are first-generation college students,” De La Torre added. “So we speak about womanlike empowerment, fitness, things that maybe you’re not unprotected to in your residence though we can benefit that believe here.”

A mentee reviews a welfare on college majors and concentrations.

Describing a struggles that immature girls and Latinas privately face, Espinosa says that many immature women confront informative vigour that prevents them from reaching their goals.

“I consider that there are a lot of expectations for women, and by expectations we meant roles that we should fulfill,” Espinosa said. “You should, yes, finish school, though maybe after on we should get married, and afterwards we should have a integrate of kids, and afterwards we should take caring of your family.”

“I mean, if we consider about a Latino community, that’s what we grew adult seeing,” she added. “That [outlook] is what we consider is still flattering prevalent here.”

Amanda de la Torre, 26, listens as her mentee Angela Opoku, 15, speaks to a group.

With L.O.V.E., however, she hopes that will change. “You’re kind of a post of a family as a woman,” she said. “So that’s unequivocally engrained. … And as an individual, we have your possess goals and dreams and passions. That, to me, is what a critical partial is.”

Espinosa hopes to eventually open high schools that are wholly dedicated to ancillary immature girls and assisting them grasp their dreams.

“I consider what we see is myself,” Espinosa said. “I changed here by myself and I’ve been doing it alone. So that’s because when someone tells me, ‘No, it’s too hard, we can’t,’ we don’t determine with it. Because even if we are in a hardest situation, we can change that and go for whatever it is that we wish to do. That’s a summary that we wish to convey.”

Mentees and mentors speak during an after-school L.O.V.E. meet-up.

Need help? In a U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for a Need help? In a U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for a Need help? In a U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/25/love-mentoring-latinas_n_7640066.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago&ir=Chicago