Why We Do It

The Magdaleno Leadership Institute (MLI) strives to create a culture of college-going youth who will spark a paradigm shift in how we view leadership, wherein, a good leader entails first and foremost, being a great servant to his community. 

The purposes of this organization shall be to:
a)   Encourage more youth to volunteer with charitable organizations and/or create organizations that address unmet needs.
b)   Engage in community and entrepreneurial projects that make our communities better places to live and work.

The pillars of MLI shall be:
a)  Servant Leadership
b)  Academic Excellence
c)  Civic Empowerment

MLI takes a developmental approach to the nation’s young population drop out rate and aptitude epidemic. We are giving students the knowledge and tools in order to empower themselves to become the positive change they wish to see in their respective communities. MLI is urgently building the next generation of servant leaders with the aim of initiating an offset and, eventually, overcoming many of the negative aftereffects of poor self-efficacy.

Some statistics:

• Since the 1980’s the Hispanic community represented the ethnicity with the highest dropout rate. Today we roughly hold a 17% that is nearly double the rate of blacks and native america/alaskan indian, nearly quadruple the rate of white and Asian/pacific islanders (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16).

• “The size of the Latino student population, whose graduation rate currently lags 21 percentage points behind that of non-Hispanic whites, has grown by 50 percent in the past decade alone,” according to the Education Week.

• “Second-generation Hispanic’s rates of high school attendance, enrollment in postsecondary institutions, and the recipient of an associate’s or higher degree are significantly higher than their first-generation counterparts”, according to the study. 

• Legal status: more than seven in ten are unauthorized and thus, ineligible for employment and most educational aid (These late entrants are not likely to be eligible for legal status under the DREAM act.
  Low English skills: two-thirds have extremely poor English skills (i.e. they reported speaking English “not well” or “not at all”).
  Low education: many come for work and have limited or interrupted education in their home countries. As time passes, it becomes more difficult and fewer opportunities exist for these young adults to recover education (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/hispanic-highschool-education-dropout_n_1096995.html).

• A study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that the population of 133 historically black ghettos had dropped 36 percent since 1970, as the U.S. black population growth slowed and many blacks moved to new areas. The newest residents in these ghettos are now more likely to be Latino, who have more than tripled their share in the neighborhoods, to 21 percent (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/11/03/latinos-in-group-hit-hardest-by-poverty-census-data-says/#ixzz1qU4ndPVr).

• The 2009 census estimates show 27.6 percent of all Latinos living in poverty, compared with 23.4 percent for blacks
  (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/11/03/latinos-in-group-hit-hardest-by-poverty-census-data-says/#ixzz1qU563wVU).

• The school dropout rate among Latino teenagers stands at 28 percent. Just 58 percent of Latinos complete high school, compared with 78 percent of non-Hispanic whites. 40 percent of Latinos age 25 and up and without high school diplomas are currently unemployed or have only a temporary job (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/04/27/school-dropout-rate-hispanics-reaches-28-pct/#ixzz1qU5XFLjA).

• In 2010, there were 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States, composing 16 percent of the total population …. Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent—rising from 35.3 million in 2000, when this group made up 13 percent of the total population.9 The Hispanic population increased by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010, accounting for over half of the 27.3 million increase in the total population of the United States. African Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population” (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/64).

• Today, 1 in 15 African-American children and 1 in 42 Latino children have a parent in prison, compared to 1 in 111 white children (Drug Courts Are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use” Drug Policy Alliance (New York, NY: March 2011), p. 9.).