Endowment’s Success Cheers Latino Leaders

Marking a significant step in the maturation of Orange County’s Latino community, a 5-year-old scholarship fund for Latino college students has reached its first goal of raising a $1-million endowment.

“It represents to the Hispanic community a coming of age in Orange County equivalent to when a community establishes a cultural institution or a performing arts center or gets a professional team,” said Juan Lara, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment services at UC Irvine and a member of the fund’s board.

The Orange County Hispanic Education Endowment Fund will celebrate the milestone at a sold-out dinner tonight at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine. The dinner, which 760 people will attend, will raise $300,000, putting the endowment fund over the $1-million mark.

The fund has awarded $40,000 in scholarships.

Started in 1993, the founders raised the first $100,000 locally. “We wanted it to come from the Latino community,” said Maria Elena Avila, a member of the fund’s executive board whose family owns Avila’s El Ranchito restaurants in Southern California. “First we had to come up with it before asking other people to take care of the cause.”

Since then, several large companies have pitched in, including Miller Brewing Co., Southern California Edison, the Walt Disney Co., McDonald’s, and the Times Mirror Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the corporation that publishes the Los Angeles Times.

Msgr. Jaime Soto, vicar to the Latino community for the Diocese of Orange, said those funds show corporations have recognized the future of immigrant communities.

“This is a significant milestone for the Hispanic community and will help dispel some of the nagging naysayers who continue to see the Latino community in Southern California as a liability instead of a dynamic asset to this region’s future,” he said.

The $1 million is expected to spin off $50,000 a year in income for scholarships, said Judith Swayne, executive director of the Orange County Community Foundation, which helps administer the fund.

But the $1 million is only the start. Board members expect that figure--and the income--to grow. Lara said the fund should double by 2000.

The Hispanic Education Endowment Fund was started by a group of Latino educators, business owners and bankers concerned about the small number of youths in their community who attend college. Fund members point out that while Latinos made up 27% of Orange County’s population in 1995, only 9% of the adults had attended four years of college. That compared with 29% among whites, 22% among African Americans and 38% among Asians.

“We took ownership of this issue by launching the programs instead of blaming someone,” said board member Gaddi Vasquez, a former Orange County supervisor.

The fund’s leaders talk of expanding the foundation’s work beyond providing scholarships, possibly to pay for college prep and mentoring and programs in elementary schools.

The foundation has been giving about a dozen college scholarships of $500 each year, several $1,000 grants to law students and grants for private elementary school students. Its focus in its formative years, however, has been less on giving money than raising it.

But with the growth of the endowment, the amount and number of awards is expected to grow.

“It’s hard to put into words what this means to the Latino community in Orange County,” Avila said. “One organization has pulled everybody together because we all know education means so much to our children, to our future.”