Our Community

There are over 130,000 Latinos in Montgomery County, of which about one-third are under the age of 18. These youth are quickly approaching the 50 percent enrollment mark in many schools of the Montgomery County public school system.

The majority of Latino youth in Montgomery County are immigrants or the children of immigrants, who have come from Central America since the 1980s due to wars, political instability, economic crisis and natural disasters. A common consequence of this crisis is that families were separated. Breadwinners were forced to immigrate to the U.S. without their children, who followed as much as a decade later, owing to expensive and cumbersome immigration procedures.

Youth, who have spent prolonged periods without their parents, face a host of difficult challenges: language barriers, culture shock, and the inability to fit in at school. Every day as we see them struggle to satisfy the diverse and often conflicting expectations of the “old ways” of their parents, the school system and society in general. But they also bring many strengths: youthful curiosity and eagerness to learn, love of family and pride in their culture, respect for others, and an impressive resilience in light of the hardships they bear.

Using the Positive Youth Development model, Identity addresses these challenges by focusing on the strengths within the Latino family.