Adelante: adv.; ahead, forward; onwards
Adelante focuses on education issues affecting Latino and migrant students and their families in North Carolina. The coalition is a collaboration among nonprofit organizations that focus on advocacy and public policy, community organizing, and grassroots support. We are working to ensure that North Carolina has a high-quality K-12 and post-secondary public education system where students will succeed and excel without regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, language, culture, socioeconomic or immigration status.
What does the Coalition hope to achieve?
1) We seek to create a consciousness among North Carolinians that is supportive and welcoming to Latino and migrant families, thus enabling their children to succeed through education.
2) We support Latino and migrant students and their families to gain the tools, information, support and motivation they need for educational success.
3) We work to ensure that North Carolina state and local educational systems are held accountable to providing a quality and equitable education to Latino and migrant students that is characterized by equality, dignity and respect.
In addition to these programmatic goals,
4) We continue to develop a highly organized network of Latino and migrant youth advocacy organizations – leading to stronger communication between the organizations, a decrease in the duplication of services, and creation of a unified voice in the public and policy sector.
What is the history of the Adelante Coalition?
Over the last few years, several of the partners have worked together to address the lack of opportunities for Latino and migrant youth to attend college. In light of these partnerships, we identified the need for a collective plan for communication, advocacy, programming and outreach to the Latino and migrant student population. In the summer of 2004, several core organizations came together to formally create the Adelante Education Coalition.
Coalition members saw a pressing need for collective work in education particularly due to the dramatic increase in NC’s Hispanic/Latino population in recent years. The total number of Hispanic students in our state increased from 77,923 in school year 2002-2003 to more than 116,976 in school year 2005-2006. This represents an increase of 50% in only 3 years.
The rapid increase in the Latino community has been accompanied by a rise in anti-immigrant action and rhetoric. Given this hostile environment, immigrant students and their allies face discrimination, as well as systemic and social barriers for attaining educational opportunities and access.
In 2012, the Adelante Education Coalition began partnering with Hispanics in Philanthropy on the Triangle for Latino Student Success Project. The project targets three counties in the vicinity of North Carolina’s Research Triangle: Durham, Johnston, and Wake. The project’s design is based on the belief that advancing Latino student success requires the meaningful and deep engagement of Latino leaders and communities. With this in mind, the project will involve coalitions between Latino families, educational institutions and key stakeholders from multiple sectors. The project makes use of a three-pronged or “triangular” strategy. For more information please visit our Student Success page on this website.
In 2015 the Coalition had two main projects: the Let’s Learn NC campaign for tuition equity and the development of useful materials and practices entitled The Latino Student Success project.