OXNARD : El Concilio Honors 5 for Leadership

El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, an Oxnard-based Latino advocacy group, has named five recipients of its countywide Leadership Awards, officials from the group said Thursday.

The annual awards recognize Latinos from Ventura County for their contributions to youth concerns, cultural arts, education, business and the community, said El Concilio Executive Director Marcos Vargas.

This year’s recipients are Channel Island High School teacher William Terrazas, Camarillo community activist Ramona Ayala, Oxnard dentist Carlos Tamayo, Oxnard College student Xochi Gomez and playwright and director Armando Garcia.

Terrazas, who has taught at Channel Islands High School since 1973, was cited for starting a group called Students for Cultural and Linguistic Democracy, which has served as a statewide model for improving academic success among Latino and other minority students, Vargas said.

Ayala started a Latino youth advocacy group called Parents and Children United of Camarillo. The group protects the rights of Latino youth who have had “negative encounters with law enforcement and the juvenile criminal justice system,” Vargas said.

Tamayo, an Oxnard dentist for two years, received the group’s award for community service for his efforts to serve poor and uninsured children in the county, Vargas said. Tamayo offers free dental screenings to students who are referred by the county and the Head Start program.

Tamayo, 29, said growing up in a hardened central Los Angeles housing project made him sensitive to the needs of poor and immigrant children. “If we don’t see them, no one else will,” Tamayo said.

Gomez, a dance instructor, received the group’s youth award. She has led classes for young people in Mexican folkloric dance through a cultural arts organization that her father, Javier Gomez, helped to found. Her father was honored by El Concilio last year.

Gomez, who is 19 and has a 3-year-old daughter, said being a teen-age mother has shaped her goals for the future. “I want to give back to the community,” she said. “I do that with dance.”

Garcia, who has been active in theater productions across the state, was recognized in the area of cultural arts. He has written and directed seven theatrical productions, including one called “Pega Duro,” a bilingual play about AIDS in the Latino community. Garcia is also a recipient of a California Arts Council’s artist-in-residence fellowship.