The city of Evanston joined Northwestern in honoring high-achieving Latino students Friday night for the first Evanston Hispanic Youth Achievement Awards.
Forty-two of last year’s fourth- through 12th-grade students were selected by their teachers and counselors to receive the awards as the best and the brightest of the city’s fast-growing minority community.
“We wish to share (Latino students’) talents with the rest of the community,” Aracely Canchola, the city’s Latino services outreach specialist, told about 125 students, parents and school officials during the ceremony in the Louis Room in the Norris University Center.
NU sponsored the awards with the city’s Bilingual Service Providers Exchange, a group of social workers, community leaders and local businesses overseen by Canchola’s office.
District 202 Superintendent Allan Alson singled out each high school honoree during the program, reading statements prepared by the nominating teachers and counselors. A translator then read the statements in Spanish.
“You have clearly distinguished yourselves,” Alson told the honorees. “You have brought honor and pride to yourselves, your families, your schools and your community.”
Although the winners were selected by their teachers last spring, the awards committee waited to hold the ceremony until October, when NU observes Hispanic Heritage Month.
Latinos are Evanston’s fastest-growing ethnic group. According to census data, the Latino population in the city grew from 3.7 percent in 1990 to more than 6 percent in 2000.
Latino children make up 9 percent of Evanston/Skokie School District 65, which oversees elementary and middle schools, and 6.7 percent of Evanston Township High School.
All of the students honored will receive a $50 savings bond from Bank One, which sponsored the event, in addition to gift certificates to Blockbuster or Barnes & Noble. The committee gave a $150 scholarship to each of the four 11th- and 12th-grade winner.
By co-sponsoring the awards, NU intended to reach out to the local Latino community, said Laura LaBauve-Maher, NU’s coordinator of Hispanic and Latino student services.
She pointed out that neither of the two graduating students honored Friday had applied to NU, instead choosing Loyola University and St. Louis University. NU wants to target Evanston’s Latino students earlier than it has in the past, she said.
Each honoree received an NU prospective student folder with information on the university’s Latino services.
“If we can make that seventh- or eighth-grader realize what they have to do to get to Northwestern, we will have done a good job,” LaBauve-Maher said.
The Rev. Cristian De La Rosa, an administrator at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, came to the ceremony to honor her daughter Erica Garandos-De La Rosa, who was selected for the award by her fifth-grade teacher at Kingsley Elementary School.
De La Rosa said it is important for the Latino community to honor its children’s achievement in education, especially since the community is so new.
She said some parents at Friday’s event work as janitors at NU and might not even consider the university an option for their children.
“This provides the opportunity for parents to contemplate the fact that their kids can come to Northwestern,” De La Rosa said. “Education is a way we can really empower the community.”
