October - A Month of Awareness and Celebration
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH
One of the Foundation’s missions is to support programs that fight the oppression of women and offer them support and practical measures such as safety planning, counseling, housing, and money.
Our foundation supports Congreso De Latinos United, Inc. The Latina Domestic Violence Program is a counseling and advocacy program for survivors as well as for children who have witnessed violence in the home between couples.
The Foundation grant provides emergency payments to help 15 households fleeing domestic violence. Funds are used to meet urgent needs for essentials, such as grocery gift cards, infant cribs, beds, and clothing.
The “Stop IPV* Program” at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a program of Lutheran Settlement House. The domestic violence program’s full-time on-site medical advocates help children with violence-induced injuries and their families living in a violent family home environment with services like referrals, counseling, play therapy, emergency housing, and safety planning. The IPV (intimate partner violence) counselors provide trauma-informed training to all medical, healthcare, and administrative staff in the ways to screen and identify signs of domestic violence and emotional trauma with their patients. Our foundation granted funding towards partial compensation of the medical advocates’ salaries.
In addition, our foundation funded an emergency housing grant this year, an add-on to this Lutheran Settlement House program designated for women and children fleeing violent homes. It provides funding for nine families to receive temporary housing for one week each.
********************
HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH
Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano (Mexican American).
These interchangeable terms describe a diverse group of 63.7 million Americans comprising 19 percent of the US population. Having ties to more than 20 Latin American countries, Latinos comprise the nation’s largest ethnic minority.
From September 15 to October 15, we celebrate the many contributions of Americans and their positive influence on our country, tracing their roots to Central America, South America, Spain, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean.
The date is historically significant as September 15 is the anniversary of independence in Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. For those with roots in Mexico and Chile, the independence anniversary is September 16 and 18.
Nearly 80 percent of Latinos living in the US are US citizens. They have contributed $2.7 billion to the US economy.
Did you know that Latino innovators created many groundbreaking inventions?
- Color TV. Upgrade from black and white to color television began in the 1960’s thanks to Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena of Mexico, who filed a patent (back in 1940) for a chromoscopic adapter for television equipment.
- Stent. Julio Palmaz of Argentina, an interventional vascular radiologist, furthered the advances made in angioplasty surgery, the operation that helps unclog blood arteries and makes it easier for blood to flow to the heart.
- CAPTCHA. Luis von Ahn of Guatemala developed the cyber-security system CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). He created this technology as a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon
University in 2000. He gave the technology to Yahoo for free, as the company was having issues with automated spammers. - Earthquake Sensing Technology. Because of University of Chile professor Arturo Arias Suarez, scientists have the ability to measure the risks of damage related to a possible earthquake. He developed a mathematical formula that assesses the strength of earthquake tremors. Building engineers can design buildings that are better equipped to withstand seismic occurrences.
- Artificial Heart. Domingo Santo Liotta, an Argentinian immigrant, became a pioneer in heart surgery. In 1969, he developed the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human.
