Yvette Walker
With KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker. This is IE Latino Voices where we invite representatives from Latino led and Latino serving organizations to share their stories and their impact in our region. Joining me today is Alejandro Cortez with the Chicano Latino Chapter of the UCR Alumni Association. Thank you so much for being with us today, Alejandro.
Alejandro Cortez
It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. It's looking forward to chatting with you.
Yvette
Alejandro, please share the mission for the Chicano Latino Alumni Chapter at UCR.
Alejandro
Well, our mission is to build a community that advocates and really promotes student growth as well as that of our staff, alumni and faculty members. The members of that community. And as such, we try to come up with programming that further supports our students.
Yvette
Please share a bit about students who engage with the Chicano Latino Alumni Chapter.
Alejandro
I would say the majority of students that engage with our group tend to be students that are part of the different Chicano Latino organizations at UC Riverside. There's an overarching organization called Raza, so they're a lot of the Raza associated clubs there and their representatives, but I think the main unifying presence that kind of glues it all together is our Chicano Student Programs (CSP). So that houses a lot of different student groups and provides different programming. As alumni now, that's a way to plug in and reconnect with the campus. So, a lot of our alumni membership is part of the Chicano Latino Alumni, is made up of students that are former students that benefited from the CSP experience.
Yvette
Please talk about some of the feedback you've received from alumni that have engaged with the Chicano Latino Alumni Chapter at UCR.
Alejandro
Well, it's very rewarding to help students either as mentors through mentorship programs that we have, but also through our scholarship program, either through donations, or being part of a scholarship committee and having to review applications and making those decisions and just reading some of those essays, sometimes bring us to tears. And at the end, it's also very rewarding to make those selections. And we have a scholarship program where we award $1,000 scholarships every year. Ten different lines. This year, we actually awarded 11. We've been doing that for the last eight, nine years, but very consistently for the past five years, we've given an average of $10,000 per year.
Yvette
What is the best way to support and connect with you?
Alejandro
You can follow us on Instagram @ucrcla and also send me an email through ucrcla@gmail.com. You can also reach out to any of our board members, if you connect to us in in the community or in different places.
Yvette
So, what is the best way to support the Chicano Latino Alumni Chapter at UCR?
Alejandro
We will kindly take donations for our scholarship program. You can always come and connect and offer your expertise, if those folks in different industry sectors. We have students that are very talented that want to gain some experiential experiences and actually being out in the field and learning the ropes in different industries. So, if you can share that expertise, I think that'd be wonderful.
Yvette
Thank you so much for being with us today, Alejandro.
Alejandro Cortez
Thanks for having me.
Yvette Walker
Join us again next week for IE Latino Voices. You can find this story and others on our website at kvcrnews.org/ielatinovoices. IE Latino Voices is produced by KVCR Public Media and is funded by generous support from the CIELO fund at IECF, uplifting and investing in the IE’s Latino community. For KVCR News, I’m Yvette Walker.
