The Spanish Action League of Syracuse is reorganizing its leadership to deal with Syracuse’s top ranking with the highest concentration of Hispanics living in poverty. The League is now pursuing new partnerships with human service agencies and organizations. Co-President Ramon Rivera says the organization has developed a new five point plan to meet their needs.
“Going forward, La Liga’s plan is quite simple. To develop collaborative arrangements that will help overcome barriers of language and culture, technology and transportation to ensure that Hispanics have access to vital community based services.”
Rivera adds the areas of focus will be health and safety, housing, education and youth programming, workforce development and career services to get people gainfully employed. He says the organization is now looking to the community for assistance.
“We have much work to do together to work with public, private and not for profit community partners to identify existing programs and services in which La Liga can play a significant and meaningful role going forward.”
Depending on the need, the League is also changing the practice of offering more specialized services in Spanish. Judith Cowden believes the new partnerships will better serve the public.
“As you can imagine, the needs of the Hispanic Community are very diverse and our commitment is very strong to try to meet each and every one of those needs ourselves. Our board and our executive team believe that we can be more effective by collaborating with the existing agencies who are already experts in fields.”
The Spanish Action League is also known as La Liga and named Elisa Morales as their new Executive Director. She is credited with her prior work assisting and navigating immigrant communities and refugees with financial, legal and social medical systems.
