MICHIGAN MIGRANT — LEGAL ASSISTANCE PROJECT, INC

Nominee: Martha Gonzalez-Cortes Executive Director of Hispanic Center of Western Mich

Teresa Hendricks-Smitley Director/Sr. Litigator

A Heart of West Michigan United Way Agency

648 MONROE, N.W., SUITE 318 GRAND RAPIDS, Ml 49503-1419 TEL (616) 454-5055 FAX (616) 454-7022 1-800-418-3390

December 30, 2002 Diana Rivera Chicano Studies/Ethnic Studies Bibliographer Michigan State University Libraries 100 Library East Lansing, MI 48824 Dear Ms. Rivera:

Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project ("MMLAP") is pleased and honored to bring to your attention a Latina leader that has made a difference for the community. Martha Gonzalez-Cortes, Executive Director of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan.

Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes has contributed directly to the field of community development among the Latino population of Western Michigan for over seven years. As a child, she was a migrant farmworker, and as an adult, she earned her Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University. Her demonstrated vision embraces collaboration, economic empowerment and leadership development among the more than 50,000 Latinos who reside in Western Michigan according to the latest census figures. MMLAP has been privileged to work directly with Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes while she was a member of our organization and in her present position as Executive Director of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan.

Our organization first became acquainted with Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes in 1992 when she began working with MMLAP as an invaluable Outreach Coordinator, paralegal and community leader. MMLAP is a non-profit organization that has provided legal services to low-income farmworkers and their families for over 25 years. Non-federally funded, MMLAP accepts many of the cases that other migrant legal services cannot handle, especially those involving undocumented workers.

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Executive Director, Hispanic Center of Wi As the daughter of migrant farmworkers and an individual who grew up living and working in farm

labor camps, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes was a welcome addition to the staff of MMLAP. She worked agricultural seasons with MMLAP from 1995 through 2000. Her projects included work on an IRC A grant to eliminate citizenship discrimination and the Farmworker Environmental Justice Project. As a bilingual, bicultural member of the community, she was extremely successful in reaching the farmworker population. She developed grass-roots techniques and methods of organizing farmworkers to increase their capacity to better their lives. She created community workshops and focus groups as part of her outreach and recruited attorney-attendance at these meetings while maintaining the confidentiality and sensitivity necessary to instill the trust of a community vulnerable to exploitation and retaliation.

In June 2000, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes accepted the position of Executive Director of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan. MMLAP continues to collaborate with Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes in her new role. The Hispanic Center is designed to promote community development and assist with support services, but must rely heavily on its network of legal service providers to provide legal council to client families in times of crisis. The Hispanic Center has come to rely on MMLAP as the primary source of either direct service (if a client meets our eligibility guidelines) or for the most appropriate referral for our non-English speaking families. Through sustained partnership efforts with Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes, MMLAP is well suited to commend Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes for this deserved leadership award and speak to her inspiring capabilities.

Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes' life has been dedicated to tackling the social injustices that plague the lives of farmworkers, immigrants and Latino populations. For the last seven years, she has sought to empower community members in Western Michigan as they seek redress for civil injustices. Currently, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan, a progressive non-profit organization founded in 1978 to provide social services to the Hispanic community in Kent County. The Center aims to advance the full and productive participation of Hispanic/Latino people in the life of the

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Executive Director, Hispanic Center of W< broader community through an advocacy of services; thereby, building unity and diversity in the community. Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes leadership style embraces and reflects this mission.

Through Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes' leadership, the Hispanic Center currently provides immigration assistance, information and referral services, employment assistance, community outreach services, youth programming and translation services to approximately 8,000 Latinos. The Hispanic Center also provides leadership and advocacy for the community in areas of housing, family and individual services, neighborhood issues, and civil and legal rights. The Center also is responsible for designing activities to promote and maintain the cultural heritage of West Michigan's diverse Latino community.

The last 10 years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the Latino population of Western Michigan. In Kent County alone, census figures rose from 14,684 in 1990 to 40,183 in 2000. Martha Gonzalez-Cortes collaborated with community organizations to creatively and strategically meet the needs of this growing population. In the Fall of 2000, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes began meeting with community leaders to develop the Mujeres Unidas Project ("Women United Project") designed to identify and train Latinas in Grand Rapids for meaningful participation and decision-making in their communities. Traditionally, Hispanic women have not been involved in leadership positions and this program serves as a tool for leadership opportunities. The Mujeres Unidas project was developed specifically to address the current void in leadership among the growing low-income Latino grassroots community in Kent County.

Participants of the Mujeres Unidas Project engage in a 14-week, culturally sensitive training designed to teach basic leadership skills, health of self and family, diverse legal and social service resources and crisis response techniques for community emergencies. The curriculum includes trainers from 25 partnering agencies in the social service, medical, education and law enforcement fields. The project is made up entirely of low-income Latina client women carefully selected to represent diverse ages, religious backgrounds, formal education and cultural differences. The beauty of the program is that it develops leadership skills among client women who are then assigned to educate a general population of underserved Latino women, children and families. Graduates conduct community outreach and educational forums for a

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Executive Director, Hispanic Center of W( 6 month period. The participating women are expected to ultimately conduct 1,000 individual encounters and 100 community education sessions reaching a total of 500 families.

In addition, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes has consistently demonstrated ingenuity in assuring the legal needs of the Latino community in Western Michigan are met. Through Mrs. Martha Gonzalez-Cortes' collaboration, MMLAP was awarded a NAPIL fellowship grant this year to address the legal immigration needs of the farmworker population in Western Michigan. "Proyecto MICA" - The Michigan Immigration Counseling and Advocacy Project was implemented in September of this year. The Hispanic Center's and MMLAP's collaboration on this project has made it possible for an attorney to conduct office hours two days a week at the Hispanic Center and work in coordination with the Center on community outreach. Previously, the Hispanic Center had served many families providing immigration information but was not able to provide legal assistance. This new partnership has complemented existing services and allowed for the expansion of the both organization's capabilities.

Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes was also responsible for assuring that the fellowship's goals include innovative community outreach to the growing Indigenous population living among our community. Our organization has received ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that large numbers of workers are being trafficked into blueberry fields in Western Michigan and are at higher risk of exploitation given many of these workers do not speak English or Spanish (many coming from Southern Mexico and Central America) and are difficult to reach. Pilot projects and focus groups similar to the Mujeres Unidas Project will be developed in order to identify Indigenous individuals, assess the extent of the population's concerns, secure legal rights and provide greater access to services. These are just a few of the multitude of ways in which Martha Gonzalez-Cortes uses her leadership gifts to develop and strengthen grassroots community leadership.

Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes embraces client needs directly and respectfully in an effort to tackle the complexity of social problems faced by the Latino community of Western Michigan. For example, as the outreach coordinator for MMLAP, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes often conducted community meetings. After one

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Executive Director, Hispanic Center of W< such meeting with H-2B foreign guestworkers, several workers were convinced they should sign our retainer agreements to pursue payment of the minimum wage. A young female farmworker became frightened of retaliation after having signed our retainer. Mrs. Gonzalez assuaged her fear by discretely tearing the retainer in half and handing it back to her. Some workers noticed this, felt empowered by it, and it was one of the rare occasions in which MMLAP was able to retain 28 clients in one evening. They were assured that their fate was in their control, and that we would follow their wishes at all times. Three months later, the woman called us to re-join the lawsuit and eventually all clients recovered their wages. Mrs. Gonzalez's leadership style is to organize, listen, explain and then empower. She gets results and people remember her.

As an example of her activities in her current position, in the first six months of 2001, Mrs. Gonzalez-Cortes had organized 116 meetings with 57 different agencies and schools in Grand Rapids to improve services to the Hispanic community. She had trained 265 parents in the local school district and had given presentations to 291 students and 128 agency workers.

The Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project thanks you for your consideration of Ms. Gonzalez for recognition. Such public recognition would continue to help fill the many needs of Western Michigan's Latino population and help sustain Martha Gonzalez-Cortes' inspiring model of community development. If our organization can be of additional assistance, please feel free to contact me at (616) 454-5055. I may also be e-mailed at thendricks@mlan.net. Sin

Teresa Hendricks Executive Director/Senior Litigator Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project

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