Lipscomb brings together community leaders in first Hispanic Forum
Janel Shoun |
Mayor Karl Dean highlights crucial point in Nashville’s growth as a multicultural city
Lipscomb President calls for community dialogue and legislative measures
based on common interests not divisive issues
Conexión Américas President Gregg Ramos closes forum with call to
continue dialogue as a catalyst for reform
A call to engage in deliberate dialogue about Nashville’s future as a multicultural city and action steps to increase Hispanics’ access to community services were the highlights of a ground-breaking forum at Lipscomb University Thursday.
Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors), Lipscomb University’s first Hispanic Forum, brought together more than 100 Middle Tennessee public officials, teachers, parents, school administrators, community and business leaders. The event featured group discussions with the goal of improving access to important resources for underserved Hispanic populations through interactive discussion sessions.
Mayor Karl Dean, Nashville Chief of Police Ronal W. Serpas and Conexión Américas President Gregg Ramos joined Lipscomb President L. Randolph Lowry as keynote speakers for the event. Participants discussed how to enhance access to services in four sectors: business and banking, education, health care and law and government.
“This is an important day when a university is engaging us beyond the classroom,” said Renata Soto, executive director of Conexión Américas. “We hope the recommendations from the forum will move us in the direction to make deliberate choices about how we connect to each other and make Nashville a better community for all.”
President Lowry calls for community dialogue and
“conversations of significance”
In his opening comments, Lipscomb President L. Randolph Lowry urged Tennessee’s community and political leaders to move toward addressing issues through dialogue involving the entire community. He also suggested a positive approach to legislation supporting cross-cultural engagement through expanding the Davidson Group (a program bringing together people of different ethnicity) throughout Tennessee and insuring that Tennessee schools focus on creating cross-cultural competency in students.
“I’d love to see a bill from our legislature that said, we are funding today the Davidson Group in every county in Tennessee. … so we could anticipate this year there would be thousands of people who simply have lunch with people who look and act a little different,” Lowry proposed.
“Or maybe a piece of legislation that recognizes that one of the most precious things we have in Tennessee is the possibility of cross-cultural competence, so we will support funding a curriculum that …insures an education in our state insures a graduate is cross-culturally competent.”
Mayor Dean highlights crucial point in Nashville’s growth
Mayor Karl Dean emphasized that the concerns he hears from Nashville’s Hispanic population are the same concerns expressed by all Nashville citizens – issues of education, law enforcement, and economic development. Dean said Nashville’s friendliness and bright future were strongly reinforced in his mind on the evening of the English Only vote in Nashville.
“Bob Dylan has a line where he says, if you aren’t busy being born, you’re busy dying. Great cities, which we are, are cities that are constantly reinventing themselves, that are energized by new people, and that’s what we’ve got going here,” Dean said.
“And we’ve got it going in ways that other places don’t have. We’ve got it going because people move here from all over the world… We’ve got it because we’ve got the music industry…. We’ve got it because we have great universities like Lipscomb. We’ve got it because we care.”
Chief Serpas pledges to continue outreach through community policing
Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas reinforced that a major aspect of his community policing approach is to outreach and engage Nashville’s Hispanic community. “We need to find new and innovative ways to reach across the divide. The language divide, the ethnicity divide, the community divide, the religious divide,” he said.
Programs already enacted are the award-winning El Protector Program begun in 2005 and a cross-cultural corps of 50 clergy from the community who act as police chaplains, he said. Other outreach efforts on the horizon include a teen police academy open to Hispanic youth, said Serpas.
Ramos challenges Abriendo Puertas
participants to continue
Gregg Ramos, president of Conexión Américas, spoke at the end of the forum and urged participants not to walk out and make the day a one-time accomplishment.
“We started a dialogue today. It’s a great opening step, but we need to follow through. But you can’t hope for follow-through until you convene for the first step,” he said. “Lipscomb University helped us gather a passionate group and now we have to take the next step and act on it.”
The forum, planned since November by Lipscomb administrators and an advisory committee of community leaders, responded to Nashville’s rising need to address the broader issues facing Middle Tennessee’s growing Hispanic population. Lipscomb’s College of Education, and its program in cross-cultural engagement joined with Conexión Américas and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools officials to develop an annual forum as a catalyst for reform.
Although planned as an annual event, organizers indicated that next steps will be taken immediately for continuing conversations on specific issues with Lipscomb University as host.
The participants at the forum -- including officials from the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Metropolitan health, police and social services departments, the Nashville city council and others -- outlined several suggestions for opening up the doors to more dialogue and less controversy. Among the suggestions were expanded communication efforts between stakeholders, spurring grassroots involvement in democracy, cultural awareness trainings and cross-cultural community events.
Lipscomb emerged as a leader in improving access to a college education for Hispanic youth last year when it established the Saint Thomas Health Services Nursing Advantage Scholarships and the Hispanic Achievers Scholarships in partnership with the Harding Place Family YMCA. Lipscomb has set a strong example of open access that other organizations should follow, said Jessie Garcia Van de Griek, director of the Hispanic Achievers program at the YMCA.
“Lipscomb is setting the pace for excellence in diversity,” Van de Griek said.