Mission

El Centro Humanitario promotes the rights and well-being of day laborers in Colorado through education, job skills and leadership development, united action and advocacy. Our goals are to develop a sense of community and self sufficiency among workers and to foster worker ownership over El Centro.

Centro Humanitario 2011 Programs and Activities:

Health and Safety in the Workplace:

El Centro staff worked to complete a major engagement with OSHA, in which El Centro designed and implemented a series of training classes including materials to educate our day laborer workforce on how to negotiate safe work conditions on the job. These courses were specific to various trades, and, once developed over 600 workers attended trainings.

El Centro is working to maintain and increase our ability to improve our traditional core programs, namely:

Employment Program/Worker engagement and development:

We are focusing on listening to our workers to facilitate their ownership of the worker center and their involvement in the governance and maintenance of the facility and the programs. We are also updating our worker database so that it is more responsive to our needs and the worker's requirements. In addition, we are emphasizing an effort to identify the opportunities and requirements of the hiring community (employers of day-laborers), not only to ensure our members protections against safety issues and wage theft, but to increase possibility for employment by offering dovetails with what our customers want.

Women's program:

Through collaboration with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, we are actively engaged to make the plight of domestic workers better understood by the larger community. El Centro is organizing domestic workers in the Denver area with an ultimate goal of working with State legislatures to pass laws offering this often invisible workforce some of the fundamental worker protections taken for granted by the majority of U.S. workers. We also continue to vigorously expand and develop the women's catering co op and their small social venture projects.

Wage theft:

In this historic area of emphasis, we are re-engaging with the D. U. Law School to staff our efforts with lawyers and legal interns, augmenting the ongoing efforts of our staff to help our members and other immigrant workers receive the pay for the work they have performed.

Aurora outreach & organizing:

We continue to develop our presence in Aurora in conjunction with the four other occupants of the Aurora Human Rights Center to offer support to community residents, domestic workers and day laborers in Original Aurora.

Strategic planning process:

Beginning in October El Centro began a three part process to prepare for strategic planning. First, an assessment phase to gather information from Centro's Board, Staff, Worker-members and collaborators, to evaluate strengths, weaknesses and ideas for the organization to move forward. During Phase 2 stakeholders will participate in a two day retreat to develop a 12-18 month plan and vision for the organization. Phase 3 will be implementation of the plan during 2012, staff and other key stakeholders identified to implement the plan will participate in a coaching process to incorporate the vision into the processes and everyday reality of El Centro's life.

We want to reach out to our community to say THANK YOU for your continued support of our work. Earlier this year, we reached out to you so that our work with day laborer members and Women's Program members could continue through this year and for years to come. We are proud to announce that YOU CAME THROUGH! Thanks to YOU, the unique work of Centro Humanitario has impacted the lives of Denver's most vulnerable members of the workforce.

Thank you,
Centro Humanitario

For more information contact:
Russ Wayman,
President, Board of Directors
Wrw646@gmail.com; (650)743-5408

Sarah Shikes,
Interim Executive Director
sshikes@centrohumanitario.org