Empowering the Hispanic faith community around the country.
Over the past 15 years, Esperanza National Programs has served the “least of these” by strengthening local churches, organizations and individuals that are engaged in serving the Hispanic community. We come alongside church leadership and laity, contributing our skills and resources to help equip and strengthen them, posturing the Hispanic faith community for even greater success. We also serve as a national intermediary providing sub-grant funds to help Hispanic nonprofits grow. See Esperanza Hispanic Ministry Small Grant Fund.
We do this through a diverse national network of more than 24,000 Hispanic clergy, congregations, lay leaders, and nonprofits. Together we strengthen the Hispanic community throughout the United States with a particular focus on youth leadership development. We provide capacity building, mentoring, grassroots and degree level education, faith engagement, housing counseling, we develop relevant resources, and provide other opportunities as they arise. Our current programs include the following:
Esperanza Youth Leadership Institute (EYLI)
The Esperanza Youth Leadership Institute is a collaborative leadership development organization that inspires vision, provides educational opportunities at the grassroots and degree level, and develops resources for those that work with Latino youth and beyond. The initiative is a subsidiary of Esperanza and a partner of Esperanza College of Eastern University. We strengthen the missional capacity of the body of Christ to reach, disciple and give a voice to young people to become agents of transformation in urban communities. For more information visit BarrioYouthInitiative.org
Renovación Pastoral
Renovación Pastoral (Pastoral Renewal) is a program of Esperanza funded by the Lilly Endowment. It is one of 74 similar pastoral care initiatives supported by the endowment. Renovación Pastoral aims to support new pastors in their first years of service to the Latino communities of Philadelphia, Allentown, Bethlehem, Lancaster, and Reading. Through Renovación Pastoral, we offer these pastors a sacred space to be affirmed, to learn, and to be nurtured through mentoring that is focused on both spiritual and practical matters. Esperanza connects pastors in their first years of ministry with active and retired veteran pastors who have demonstrated longevity and success in local ministry, helping the younger pastors to transition successfully into congregational leadership, while building a pastoral legacy for the well-seasoned religious leaders of the Latino communities of Southeastern Pennsylvania. For more information visit esperanza.us/renovacion-pastoral.
Real Time Mentoring Program (RTM)
The Real Time Mentoring Program is one of our longest concurrent national programs. We are on the seventh consecutive year of providing best practice youth mentoring services to the Hispanic community. This program is funded by the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and its objective is to support organizations as they strengthen or expand existing mentoring activities and provide positive youth development for high-risk youth in underserved communities. We provide training, technical assistance, and funding to seven mentoring sites located in six cities: Philadelphia, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Miami.
Esperanza Capacity Institute (ECI)
The Esperanza Capacity Institute (ECI) is a two-day conference created to serve both faith-based and community-based organizations that are dedicated to improving the lives of people who are underserved and often marginalized in our cities and our nation. ECI offers many workshops across multiple tracks, including housing, mentoring, nonprofit management, chaplaincy, and youth ministry. We facilitate learning that helps foster growth of participating organizations and their leadership and staff. This training has helped organizations strengthen and expand their services and become more effective in meeting the needs of the communities that they serve and care about.
Esperanza Bible Engagement
We as the Body of Christ are the hands and feet of our Creator. We exercise this reality through the sharing of the Good News of Jesus Christ and our service toward others. In partnership with the American Bible Society (ABS), Esperanza, through National Programs is piloting a campaign to influence the City of Philadelphia’s more than 200,000 Latinos to actively engage the Bible. The campaign is called “Vive la Vida, Vive la Palabra” (Live Life, Live the Word). This campaign brings forth the Word of God to meet and converge in service of the “other” as we bring the Bible to life in our community. We believe that Bible engagement, translates to Bible participation; allowing people engaging God’s word the opportunity to live it out. This can be done through #GoAndDo or other creative means to serve our neighbors. Ultimately, we seek “Interaction with the Bible that enables people to experience its life changing message.”