LDF-Leaders Del Futuro

Thanks y’all for coming out to celebrate the end of a great year with Leaders Del Futuro! We appreciate each and every one of you for participating in events, helping with fundraisers, and for simply being a part of Leaders Del Futuro! Good luck with finals week, we believe in you all!

"My relationship with my family during high school wasn’t the best. They didn’t necessarily understand the struggles I faced when it came to school related things. They didn’t understand that everything I was doing after school would help me get into college. I still face this because my parents never went to college, so I couldn’t rely on them in that aspect. I mostly vented to my friends because they understood but now the roles have flipped. I consider myself to be a social person which is why I joined a sorority to have a community, but If I’m struggling I tend to keep things to myself and say everything is okay. Instead of venting to my sorority sisters or my friends I call my parents. If I’m upset, frustrated, or discouraged I call home.
I’d say my greatest push is my grandpa and my family. I always told my mom that UW was the greatest school in Washington and she told my grandpa who didn’t know what college was. One day we were walking around the mall and we bumped into his friend and he proudly said “Oh, this is my granddaughter, she is going to UW and it’s the best school in Washington. She is working so hard and doing all these amazing things.” I just stood there in awe and thought about how much I love him. Now just seeing my family in their husky gear I’m reminded that they are my #1 supporters. Even though they may not fully grasp the college experience, it’s a great feeling to know that my family will always be proud of me and no matter how hard I work or how difficult things get, as long as I do what I want to do and come out on top they will always be there for me." Brenda Villa

We'd like to introduce ourselves!
We're so excited to serve you all this year as your Leaders Del Futuro officers.
Feel free to reach out to any one of us, we're more than happy to answer any questions you may have about LDF!

"I’ve always wanted to go to university because I come from Chelan, where the only thing you have going for you is working in an orchard, factory, or at subway. Usually you never saw any opportunities, and the only kids you saw doing things were the rich kids who already had everything. I thought that if I looked for what I wanted, maybe I could have it too. When I was little I started looking into things with my mom. That’s when my mom helped me look into running start when I was in 6th grade. I wanted to do running start, so my whole life I was building up to that. Also, around 9th grade I realized how much I loved science. I looked into jobs that I wanted to do and I realized what I wanted. What I wanted was mostly like a buildup of how my life had been. I’m the oldest of five kids, and growing up I was five years older than the second oldest. I was always the one taking care of my brothers. I’ve always had this mentality that I need to help someone. I like seeing my brothers happy and seeing them be successful in life, and I just want the best for them. I realized that was how I wanted everyone to feel, so I started thinking that maybe I wanted to go into medical school. I started building up these ideas and I started planning for classes that I was going to take. I looked into things I could do at my local community college, and as soon as I got there I already knew which classes I was going to take. I also realized that I wanted to major in biochemistry. I finished running start, and when I graduated my mom was like, “Mijo, I’m already proud of you. From now on do whatever makes you happy. Whatever you decide to do in life, I’ll be there for you.” So I did two years of running start, and when I came here everything was different. Back home I was with my family and every day I would go to school and I would come back to take care of my brothers. I helped them do their homework, make sure they would go to soccer practice, and make sure they didn’t get into trouble. I came here and I felt like I just lost it all and there was nothing left. I was all by myself. Then, I remembered what my mom said and I was like, “Well, that’s fine I guess. Life changes, so I should just adapt to it.” So I started getting more involved with school and taking a lot of classes. I started taking ochem and calculus and all these other things which were turning into a lot of work, but I was liking it. I liked doing it all. I also wanted to be more involved with the people around me because I felt like I didn’t have a connection with my culture like I did back home. I didn’t realize how much I missed It, and how much it was a big part of me. So I joined clubs like LDF so I could be closer to home. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m just trying to get ahead and doing things that make me happy."

Hello everyone!

Yesterday evening, we were very fortunate enough to earn the "Breakout Organization Of The Year" Award at the 2017 Kelly ECC Awards Gala. We are humbled to receive this honor and recognition and it could not have been possible without the continuous help and support from our officers, mentors, mentees, and friends. LDF thanks you for supporting our events and fundraisers this past school year, and we hope to see many more of you in our events to come next school year!

If you still aren't familiar with the purpose of LDF, we aim to assist students from migrant, undocumented, low income, and underrepresented backgrounds in achieving their goals through individual mentoring and tutoring related to a student's intended career path. We are fostering success to create leaders of the future.

If you're interested in joining, feel free to contact any one of us or check out our website at leadersdelfuturo.com which provides more information in becoming or finding a mentor.

Mil Gracias,

Leaders Del Futuro

p.s. We will be having our Spring Fundraiser on Tuesday, May 23rd in which we will be selling Fresas Con Crema, Bionicos, and Mangonadas! Come find us at Red Square!

"I remember when I was small, maybe about 5 or 6 years old, having a conversation with my mom about her aspirations for me. My mom had told me that she wished very much to see me become a bilingual secretary working in an office. I think that for her this was the polar opposite of the back breaking work that my parents both did as immigrant farmworkers in order to give their kids an opportunity for a better life. She would tell me, “Mija tu vas a hacer una secretaria que va a saber inglés y español para poder ayudar a personas como nosotros.” It humbles me that this conversation really stuck with me. I think about it now, and how I don’t think my parents would have ever dreamed to see my older brother become a doctor, or see me attend one of the best nursing schools in the country. Let alone-see all 5 of their kids fight their way through spaces that weren’t meant for them and graduate with college degrees. My parents taught us cómo luchar, y luchamos por ellos.

Currently, my life revolves around nursing school and all of it’s complexities; the highs of learning new clinical skills in lab, and sometimes the heart breaking patient experiences at clinicals. There was a point where I was deciding between pre-med or nursing. I love nursing because there’s nothing like the experience of providing care for someone through one of their most vulnerable points in their lives. And with nursing, there’s always an opportunity to reinvent yourself. You can stay at the bedside in in-patient settings, you could go into forensics, or genetics, you can even expand your career by becoming a Nurse Practitioner (which is what I ultimately want to do). The possibilities are limitless.

I’m very proud of the person I’m becoming, and I know that I owe everything to my parents. I feel like growing up they were perfect examples of hard working, yet humble people. They worked so hard for the very little that we had, yet they never gave up in instilling to me the value of an education. I hope they realize now—that I got the hint."

PC: Esther Estrada

"I think I probably wouldn’t be here if I never moved from California. I reflect on these things now and what it would have been like if I still lived there. I would see a lot of my family members only choose two paths. They either worked in the fields, or they were troublemakers. I’m from Salinas, California, which is a town surrounded by agriculture. A lot of my family members were farmworkers, and my parents were also farmworkers. We lived in the ghetto and I think that one of the scariest things about it was when they ended up shooting at our apartment. That’s when my mom didn’t want to be there anymore, so we moved to Washington. When I moved to Washington from California, I was having troubles with English. Probably because I wasn’t used to it. I started reading a ton of books because I felt like I wasn’t good enough when I would read and write, and speak to others in English. I used to fail at it, but over time I’ve gotten better. When I started working on my English, it gave me a reason to do better in school. I thought, “If I’m good with this, then maybe I’m good with this other thing.” In middle school, I tried to place into higher math and English but it didn’t happen. In high school, I was placed in Honors English and I was honestly going to drop it because I wasn’t confident in myself, but I ended up sticking with it. After that, I started thinking about my opportunities. I was thankful for the opportunities that I was given, especially because my parents never had them. Whenever you have the opportunity to learn something, go for it. The reason I do things is because I want to challenge myself and see how far I can go. I have pushed myself to the extreme before. I remember I would stay up all the time just to study in high school. I would say to myself “If it’s going to help me, why not push myself further?” Especially with education. If I have the opportunity of learning more, then why not put effort into that?"

Happy almost Unity Day!!! We welcome everyone to come try our delicious Mexican-style Fresas con Crema (Strawberries with Cream) as well as Mexican Candy!!! We will be selling our Fresas con Crema for only $3 and we will accept cash or Venmo. We hope to see you there!
Check out the event page for Unity Day for more details: https://www.facebook.com/events/412539829145209/

“As of right now I can say “Hi I'm lost” in German, French, and some Italian. The one I'm messing around with the most right now is Russian. Free time for me involves me screwing around with French since I was nine. My family is traditionally like “if you can learn something new then go for it.” When they offered French in high school I took it. In high school, I also took all of the AP classes that they offered. My first quarter here was a lot easier than high school. The thing about my senior year is that I kind of burned myself out, so I told myself never again. Growing up, my parents were huge on education. The key gems were: “If you're going to do something, do it well or don't bother at all” (which ties into my brother’s and my GPA), also “No te duermas en tus laureles.” I always try to learn something new. For example, my dad really recommended that I learned the saxophone over the trumpet where there’s only three valves. Music was a huge thing for our family. There was a time where we had financial issues due to the recession, but even when that was happening it was habit for us to listen to music in the background. Apparently my parents had a really weird taste and that passed on to my brother and me. We heard Jose Jose, baladas, Shakira, Chopin, and Mozart more often than rancheras.”