Young Latinos in Denver going house to house to promote educational measure

Denver, Nov 4 (EFEUSA).- Dozens of young Denver Latinos on Tuesday will wrap up their effort to visit the homes of some 8,000 voters in the Colorado capital to urge them to support a local initiative that, if approved, would allocate funds for free or subsidized preschool education programs in the city's Hispanic neighborhoods.
With the slogan "United We Vote!" the members of the Padres y Jovenes Unidos community organization decided to mobilize to support so-called Measure 2A, which - by means of a slight sales tax increase (from 12 to 15 cents per $100) will collect an extra $5 million per year to fund the resumption of preschool summer school classes and expand existing programs.
"People still don't know how important voting in favor of children in this neighborhood is. People should understand that their vote really can make a difference," said Hugo Hernandez, a student at Kennedy High School who visited some 130 homes each day.
Helping children, he said, "makes this campaign worth it."
Meanwhile, Elsa Oliva Rocha, the coordinator of the effort, said that the Hispanic community needs Measure 2A to be approved because, if it is not, "families will not be able to send their kids to preschool."
The reason for that is the poverty level that prevails in the area. For example, in the west Denver neighborhood of Westwood, 80 percent of the residents are Latinos, compared with 31 percent in the rest of the city, and 24 percent of the families live in poverty, compared with 10 percent elsewhere in Denver.
In addition, 87 percent of the students in the local public schools are Hispanic (vs. 56 percent in Denver as a whole) and 14 percent of the area children are under age 6, the same as in the city overall.
In addition, Oliva Rocha said, the campaign is needed because Latinos represent 37 percent of the votes in southwest Denver, compared with 14 percent in all of Colorado.
"We didn't know how the community was going to respond to this campaign. We were planning to have 12 young people go house to house, but we had 25 kids and parents each day. It's incredible, especially in the case of the kids," said the community leader.
Meanwhile, Gloria Borunda, one of the mothers who went door to door, said that although the public is already "tired of unfulfilled promises ... not voting makes things worse." And the kids, she said, "are the first to acknowledge it."
"The young people know that this election is very important for southwest Denver," said the Hispanic mother. EFEUSA