The Power of Hispanic Elders

Corita Brown is the Assistant Director of Communities for All Ages, a program of Temple University's Intergenerational Center that helps create sustainable communities through multi-generational collaboration.

I had the real honor and pleasure this week of attending the National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) conference in Washington DC with Coming of Age trainers Manuel Portillo, Santiago Burgos and Yvonne Thompson-Friend who were leading workshops on advocacy and civic engagement.

While planning the training, we weren't quite sure what to expect....this was the first time that NHCOA had ever offered these workshops for older adults and we had no idea how they would be received. When we got to the conference we were met by an incredibly diverse group of 50+ers originally from places including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Columbia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Domincan Republic, Cuba, Spain and Cincinnatti! Many of the participants had never received any training before related to civic engagement or leadership development. We wondered: how would they respond?

It was clear within minutes of beginning the training that we had absolutely nothing to worry about. While many of the participants had never been through formal training, the room was filled with strong and vibrant community leaders. Whether it was in their family, in their local community, or with visits to their congressional representatives...everyone had a story about how they used their influence to create a postive and meaningful change in their own life and the lives of others. Wow! (or Wao as it is spelled in Spanish...)

A main goal of the workshop was to help the members learn how to use personal experiences and passion to tell an effective advocacy story. As you can imagine-with such a wide breadth of experience in the room there was an incredible richness in the stories that we heard. Health care was really the "hot topic" of the conference. One man spoke about how although he is a citizen here, when he needs medical attention he has to travel back to his native country---a very small and impovershed place that still manages to provide universal health care coverage to its residents.

Another woman spoke about her first experience telling her story about her struggles and her family's struggle with cancer to her state representatives. She spoke about how every time she told her story over again that she cried---but nonetheless she still managed to tell her story again and again to different representatives in the effort to increase support for research and treatment.

Several people spoke about their challenges navigating a health care system that didn't provide any translation services for immigrant communities. While people spoke I saw others listening and nodding. Clearly each story was unique-but also seemed to resonate deeply with a collective group experience.

After lunch we suspected that people's energy might wane (I know I am often tired after a big lunch) and so had developed a range of "energizing activites" for the group that proved to be absolutely unnecessary! The group was even more energetic than before...participating in roles plays, brainstorming, laughing, and talking... Many participants remarked at the end of the day that they wanted to keep going. These workshops were only the beginning. By the time they were getting ready to leave, people were already developing plans to work with their communities when they got home, tell their stories, listen to the stories of their family and friends and bring these stories to a wider audience as a way to make positive, meaningful change in their own lives and the lives of their families and their community.