Latino Community Essay

1253 Words3 Pages

Identify the population and provide a description and background of the population including potential cultural identifiers, stereotypes, and traditions. Latino population is one of the largest minority group in the United State. The name Latino is a term designed to encompass a variety of groups: Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Dominican Americans, and increasingly, U.S residents of Central and South American descent. They are refer to Latino because they are Spanish-speaking nation and they share some common history of colonization, similarities in their connection and adaptation to the Catholic Church (Fong et al, 2012). Latino is the preferred term as one that is self-applied, as compared to Hispanic, which is a term …show more content…

As defined by McWhirter (1991), empowerment refers to helping individuals and groups develop an awareness of the role of power and privilege in their lives, helping them develop knowledge and skills for appropriately taking control over their life situations and helping them empower others in the community. In regards to the above definition, the rural population needs to have a better understanding of their circumstances and the wiliness to fight for positive change in their community, but not to dwell on the constant discrimination or oppression experience. Having a resilience attitude to address situation no matter how hard they have been stretch, where they are able to make meaningful decisions in the choices that affect the quality of life events. To develop a strong sense of self-worth and self-efficacy, empowering them to challenge discriminatory social, economic and political polices. Significantly focusing on empowerment strategies for the rural population that will foster self-advocacy to help them identify and respond effectively to environment and institutional barriers to success. According to Van (1996) Self-advocacy as the ability to assertively communicate or negotiate one’s interest, desires, needs, and right. Empowerment of minority students with self-advocacy skills may serve as a catalyst for change in the education …show more content…

Identify ways that practicing social workers could assist rural populations in achieving their desired outcomes The social worker could as assist the rural population by introducing a community building concept. According to Smock (2004) community building focuses on strengthening the social and economic fabric of communities by connecting them to outside resources, the goal is to build the internal capacity of communities by focusing on their assets/strengths and engaging a broad range of community stakeholders to develop high-quality and technically sound comprehensive plans. Also, social worker could assist rural population to achieve their desired outcomes, by using the basic principle, strategies and skills of a consensus organizer such as: • Conducting a community analysis in identifying the strength, interest and resources of the community. • Build relationship among the rural population, where the attribute of some potential community leaders who could be of help is

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