Texas Baptists’ Hispanic Education Initiative making tangible progress

DALLAS—Two years into Texas Baptists’ Hispanic Education Initiative, leaders are seeing the beginnings of a culture of educational success emerge.

The effort is helping encourage a structure through which Hispanics can begin dreaming about their educational goals early in life and continue to accomplish them throughout their lives, said Gus Reyes, director of the initiative.

Through that process, Reyes has identified resources for Hispanic students and created a website—www.texasbaptists.org/HEI—that serves as a portal to more than 530 scholarship opportunities and planning resources for them. A free online GED program for churches was launched. During last year’s annual meeting of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas, seven $500 college scholarships were awarded.

The resources are important, but it’s the relational opportunities Reyes sees developing among Hispanic Baptists that truly excite him and present the key to a bright future for the demographic. Hispanic leaders have gathered twice in Austin through a partnership with the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission to discuss education issues with legislators.

Church leaders are networking across the state, working together to brainstorm and implement ideas that encourage education among their students. In Lubbock, Alliance Baptist Church piloted an educational emphasis called Finish the Race, which encourages students to finish high school. Churches are holding education emphasis days and raising money for college scholarships. Teens and young adults are coming together, grasping and seeking the educational possibilities before them.

“We encourage peer group solutions,” Reyes said. “In the Hispanic community, if the peer group does not go forward academically, then it is difficult for the individual to go alone. If you want to have an impact for culture and society, you have to help the peer group have education dreams.  This creates an environment ‘friendly’ to academic goals. Another aspect significant to success is connecting mentors to students. Mentors help develop dreams and provide academic ‘how-to’s’ for student success.”

 Initiative leaders are working to foster this environment of encouragement, continuing to try to recruit an education director in every compañerismo and an education coordinator in every church. The process has been slow, but organizers remain committed to the effort, believing local leadership is a major strategy for the education initiative to succeed on a large scale.

Churches and church leaders are trusted friends for many Hispanics, Reyes said. What they say or encourage holds a significant amount of weight. Church members will be among the first people to know when and how people need encouragement and help.

“That is why we want churches to have an education coordinator, an advocate in their churches to share resources, helping kids find mentors, and helping us know the problems that we need to help address,” he said. “It is a two-way resource.”

The education initiative is stepping up its efforts during this year’s gathering of the Hispanic Baptist Convention. Leaders hope to give away more than 20 $1,000 scholarships. Each is enough to pay for a semester of community college or help pay for classes at a university or college. “With this approach, we encourage students to go to college and for some, it wasn’t even on their radar and it might change the entire course of their life,” Reyes said.

Initiative leaders also are releasing more than 100 stories of hope, testimonies of Hispanic Baptists who went through a variety of struggles but managed to achieve their educational goals.

Many of the people share stories about the influence family members and ministers had on them, and how encouragement came at the ideal time. Then they trusted God to take care of them as they worked as hard as they could through school.

Reyes believes these individuals and their stories can encourage Hispanic students across the state. “My advice is when you get discouraged and want to quit school, go read one of these stories. You will find people like them that made it. The obstacles they faced were overwhelming, but they all give credit to God helping them overcome.”

Copies of Stories of Hope can be secured by calling (888) 244 9400.