Getting into private high schools and top universities is hard enough. When English is your second language, the hurdle gets significantly higher. Now, a handful of Georgetown students are setting out to bring new opportunities to America’s fasting growing minority group by teaching English to both young and old. As their skills in English grow, so do their educational opportunities and employment possibilities. The Latino Student Fund gives first generation Latino families the chance to better their lives by acquiring the necessities to assimilate into American life.
For Luis Torres (COL ’05), the educational programs manager of the LSF, the chance to help Latino students with their academic endeavors combines the best of both worlds — his Latino heritage and his Georgetown education.
Torres began working with the Fund two years after his graduation from Georgetown in 2005. After working for two years with Teach for America, he decided to return to the Hilltop and enhance efforts to help educate primarily first-generation Latino immigrants.
“I made an effort to reach out to my alma mater and got a great response from students and alums in the area,” he said.
Now, several other members of the Georgetown community have joined Torres’ effort.
One member of the Georgetown community that Torres greatly credits with the fund’s success finding volunteers in the university is Joseph Palacios, Torres’ mentor, friend and a professor in the sociology and anthropology department. Torres said it was Palacios who connected him with many of the interested students on campus.
“Luis Torres is a first rate teacher. … Having worked with him as a teacher and mentor, I can say that he is inspirational and very energized about improving public school education for Latinos,” Palacios said.
“Those working with him will be inspired, as well as gain practical knowledge on how to make an impact on student lives.”
“He’s a visionary,” says Rosalia Miller, one of the organization’s founders.
But the work is just beginning. The LSF continues to grow at a remarkable pace.
“We are looking forward to growing our program,” Torres says, “and with the support of the Georgetown community, we will definitely succeed.”

History Lesson
The Latino Student Fund has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1994, when Miller, a Spanish teacher at the National Cathedral School, would tutor girls in middle and high school in the school’s cafeteria. Back then, Miller said, there were only four to six students, mostly from El Salvador — a small number compared to the 90 students that receive scholarships today from the more than $93,000 the fund gives to students who would like to attend private and parochial schools in the D.C. area. The one-on-one tutoring for students in grades K-12 and English as a Second Language classes for their parents now boasts over 150 participants from every Latin American country.
By providing financial aid and other funds for the kids and their families, LSF gives real hope for the continuing education and future of the participants. While a soccer component of the program bridges the gap between cultures, the language tutoring and monetary support give the tools needed to thrive in society today. And it all adds up — for every one dollar the LSF gives in scholarship money, students receive an additional $10 from other sources.
The program’s commitment to bettering the lives of the students it teaches is based on a simple principle: education. In addition to the ESL classes, the students are also tutored in math and basic computer skills, while the one-on-one aspect allows the children and tutors to develop a strong, mentoring relationship. It is just this kind of positive attention that the LSF hopes will make a difference.
“I’m a a mom and an educator, and I could see the kids were falling through the cracks,” Miller said. “The tutoring program seemed like the natural next step.”
One of the Fund’s many success stories is that of Antonio Caro, who began receiving assistance from the Fund when he was in middle school. Antonio applied to St. Alban’s School, a private independent, boys school, and was enrolled shortly after. He still attends the tutoring program every Saturday and is now preparing for the SAT and college.
The road to charity is both short and well traveled. Only a five-minute drive up the road for most Georgetown students, the National Cathedral School on Wisconsin Avenue, where the tutoring program is housed, is easily accessible to those who wish to work at the Fund as volunteers. Over the past few years, there have been several Georgetown students and alumni who have made the drive to the school and assisted children involved with the fund. Sareeta Carter (COL ’06) graduated from Georgetown with a degree in mathematics, and helped Torres create the math diagnostic tests for his tutoring program. Another alum who worked with the program is Victor Ovalle (NHS ’05), who became involved by helping students with scholarship and university applications. Anij Clubb (COL ’07) also volunteered by taking care of the smaller children who accompany their parents taking ESL classes.
From the Hilltop to the Soccer Field
One problem the group faced was reaching out to students. But Alejandro Delgado (SFS ’08), Thomas Perkowski (SFS ’08) and Manuel Leon (SFS ’08) have recently taken the program in a new direction by proposing a new soccer leadership camp for the students in the Fund, using the popular sport to bring the students together. The Latino Student Fund became involved in the seniors’ plans when they decided to focus only on the soccer component and leave the tutoring to others.
“We wanted to establish a student-run organization whose objective was to tutor disadvantaged Latino immigrants, assisting them with their English and attempting to provide help in any subject area in which they are deficient,” Leon said. “Our organization would combine tutoring with soccer, which can be used as a means to impart valuable social skills, such as trust, leadership, communication, teamwork and responsibility and interpersonal interaction.”
Soccer serves as a uniting force, Delgado said, who added that they didn’t finish their tutoring, they couldn’t play.”
“This [soccer] addresses the whole child,” Miller said. Ultimately, though, the triumvirate attempting to start the soccer program fell short, mostly because of what the group attributed to a shortage of fields and inconvenient travel arrangements.
Still, each said that their experience with the LSF was a positive one.
“We saw a highly professional and extremely dedicated personnel determined to provide the resources necessary for disadvantaged Latino immigrants, both children and their parents, to learn,” Leon said.
Delgado described the mutual excitement of the volunteers and kids on his first day working at the school. “This one little kid, about six or seven, from Portugal, raised his hand and asked, ‘What do we need to bring?’ It was neat to see him so excited.”
Even with the venture ultimately unsuccessful, what Leon remembers best are the children.
“You could not have asked for a better group of kids,” he said. “They were happy and excited to be there.”