Every year in California, as many as 4,000 Latino families benefit from the services provided by Fiesta Educativa, Inc., a non-profit organization aimed at assisting Latino families obtain services for their disabled children and educating them about their rights.

Founded in 1978, Fiesta Educativa was established in East Los Angeles. It later formed regional offices throughout the state. Today, Fiesta Educativa is a national organization with offices in Texas and New Mexico. The original mission was to fill a void within the Latino community that wasn't being met by other disability organizations.

"For a good number of Latinos, of course, there's a language barrier," explains Irene Martínez, Fiesta Educativa's executive director. "And many major service providers may not have the resources to provide their services in a bilingual format."

But Fiesta Educativa does. In fact, it's one of the few organizations in the country that is fully dedicated to empowering and educating Latino families with developmentally disabled children through training, referrals and advocacy services.

"Cultural differences also make it difficult for many Latinos to access needed services," Martínez adds.

"For example, research shows that many Latino families under-utilize residential services either on a temporary or permanent basis because there's a tendency for Latinos to take care of their own," she says, "rather than going outside of the family unit for help."

One way Fiesta Educativa empowers families is through Fiesta Familiar, the organization's family-centered meetings. Families volunteer their homes to host a Fiesta Familiar session dealing with one of a number of topics ranging from accessing appropriate health benefits for their child with special needs to discussing sexuality within the disabled community.

"It's more personal, so you're more at ease," says Gonzalo Centeno, President of the Fiesta Educativa Board of Directors. He notes that the success behind these meetings is the close relationships that develop between families who share a common struggle.

The most popular event organized by Fiesta Educativa is the annual two-day bilingual conference at the University of Southern California campus. This is the largest conference of its kind bringing together Latino parents of disabled children and working professionals through a number of workshops, presentations and discussions. About 1,100 people attended last year's conference which included workshops dealing with behavior modification, in-home support services and computer access for people with special needs, to name a few.

This year's conference will keep in the tradition of informing and empowering families through various workshops. "We will be featuring the abilities and talents of individuals with disabilities and special needs and have motivational speakers," Mart ínez says.

And through it all, the Fiesta Educativa family feels a sense of satisfaction knowing that their hard work is helping to make it easier for Spanish-speaking parents to become empowered in dealing with their childs' special needs.

"The more informed and educated the parents are, the easier it is for them to cope with everyday life," Centeno afirms.

  "It's gratifying, [but] you're never really content, you know, you never really get to the point where you say, 'We're meeting the need' because the need is so great," Martínez adds.

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