Spring 2024 Update from Las Casas

Spring 2024 Update

Las Casas Community Fair April 22nd - Join us!

On Monday, April 22nd, from 6-8pm, Las Casas will be hosting our 2nd Annual Fruitvale Community Fair at Cristo Rey de la Salle High School. Our Fair will feature up to 20 local nonprofits/social service agencies and include cultural performances, music and speakers. We anticipate over 250 attendees from our broader community, including our students, teachers, and local Fruitvale residents. The goal is to connect individuals to the critical services they need and create space for collaboration among Fruitvale organizations that do important work in the community.

We invite you to join us to celebrate and collaborate with our wonderful Fruitvale community! Additionally, we are seeking sponsors to help ensure the success of this powerful event. If you know of any local businesses or organizations that may be interested in participating as a sponsor, please let us know. Learn more!

Celebrating our Success

At the end of last semester, Las Casas held an all-school celebration to mark the holiday season and give thanks for the amazing support we received for our Year End Campaign! We raised over $20,000 from our community of Las Casas supporters!! We are beyond grateful!

Our joyful celebration included holiday carols, free books donated by the Cesar Chavez branch of the Oakland Public Library, cookies, donuts and hot cider! It was a wonderful way to come together as a Las Casas Family.

Student Leaders

Last fall we kicked off our new Student Advisory Board, which aims to elevate student voices and create leaders in our school and community. Our leaders meet monthly to identify student needs, organize projects and will be helping to support and organize our upcoming Community Fair on April 22nd.

Our "Las Casas Leaders" act as representatives in each of our classrooms. They have already made a huge impact on our program by making important programmatic announcements and bringing community groups into the classroom to share resources and information with students.

Volunteer Spotlight

Three nights a week you can find Rosa Carranza volunteering as a teaching assistant in our Introduction level class. Rosa is originally from El Salvador and came to the U.S. in 1991. After working many jobs—as a nanny, house cleaner and painter—Rosa enrolled at the City College of San Francisco to learn English and went on to get her Associates Degree in Child Development and Family Studies. In 2017 she gained her credentials as a Site Supervisor in Early Childhood Education. For the past 10 years Rosa has been a teacher at Escuelita del Bosque, a Spanish Immersion Forest School for children.

Rosa has more than one reason to volunteer a Las Casas. The first and most important is that it makes her feel good to help others. As an immigrant who also took ESL classes, she loves to teach and share her knowledge and experiences with our students. In addition, Rosa's youngest daughter is currently learning English as a student at Las Casas in our Intermediate High class.

We are so grateful to have Rosa volunteering with Las Casas—she is a true inspiration to our students!

Record Numbers

Las Casas has experienced unprecedented demand for our classes. This semester we have over 200 enrolled students and we also have a waitlist. From Fall 2023 to Spring 2024, we had an incredible retention rate of 86%! Our goal is to meet this need and help our immigrant community gain the English skills they need to build a better life for themselves in their new country.

To accomplish this, we have grown our volunteer base to 50 regular Lead and Assistant Teachers! This allows us to keep our student-teacher ratios low and continue to offer the personalized, hands on instruction that makes Las Casas unique. We have also increased our class size and organized class instruction around more small-group learning to ensure students get the support they need.

As always, please forward this update to family and friends who might be interested in learning more about our work. We only charge our students a small fraction of our overall costs and we depend on the generosity of our community to keep our program strong. Please consider making a donation - we appreciate all gifts of any size!

For more information on how to get involved, email us at: info@lascasasoakland.org or visit our website: lascasasoakland.org.

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Las Casas is a Sponsored Ministry of the

Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose.

Las Casas | lascasasoakland.org

info@lascasasoakland.org | 510-842-3070