Giving what she’s received

Michael Miller

Claudia Flores will graduate from UC Irvine this year with a double

major in psychology and sociology. But if not for the intervention of

a local group, she might never have entered.

“At Save Our Youth, they told me to take the SAT II on the last

testing date in December of my senior year,” said Flores, relaxing in

her office at UC Irvine’s Community Outreach Partnership Center. “I

took it and got an 800 in Spanish. That was the last test I had to

take.”

Flores, 22, was not the first member of her family to graduate

from college -- her father had earned an agricultural engineering

degree in Mexico -- but as the daughter of immigrants, she knew

little about the college system in the United States. However, when

she joined Save Our Youth, a local nonprofit group that helps

low-income students prepare for college, her life was changed

forever.

“College was always in the back of my mind, but I didn’t know

anything about the application process,” she said. “It wasn’t until I

entered the Save Our Youth program in the eighth grade that I got

those tools.”

Tuesday, she’ll be giving some of that knowledge back. For the

second year in a row, Flores has organized UC Irvine’s annual Latino

Youth Conference, a daylong event that offers seminars in college

application and standardized tests to Newport-Mesa seventh- through

11th-graders. About 200 students from the district’s schools are

expected to attend.

“If you have the motivation, whether it be internal or external,

you are going to excel,” Flores said. “It is not so that Latinos

don’t want to go to college, but there are other external factors

that may prevent them from going. Money is a factor, and if they’re

undocumented, they may pay triple the amount.”

The Latino Youth Conference, currently in its eighth year and its

second under Flores, seeks to remedy that situation. Each grade level

from seventh through 11th participates in a different series of

seminars with Flores and UC Irvine officials, who give talks on how

to prepare for the SATs, how to choose a career, even how to handle

stress.

Graduates of past Latino Youth Conferences say that the program is

essential for low-income students who struggle with limited means.

“It’s very important,” said Lucia Martin, a senior at Estancia

High School who will be speaking at the event. “Since we are a

minority, we don’t get much information from our parents. Most of us

are first-generation students, so our parents didn’t go to college,

and they don’t know how it works. We don’t have many resources to

help us with that, so that’s why we turn to the Latino Youth

Conference and places like Save Our Youth.”

The Community Outreach Partnership Center, run by Victor Becerra,

hosts two programs besides the conference: an education summit for

Spanish-speaking parents, held at UC Irvine on May 28, and SAT

training workshops at Estancia and Costa Mesa high schools.

Becerra, who comes from a working-class background, knows how

struggling students feel.

“I’m one of those kids,” he said. “I grew up in a single-family

house, very poor, and through these kinds of outreach programs, I was

able to eventually go to college and achieve the success I’ve had.”

The eighth annual Latino Youth Conference will be held Tuesday at

Aldrich Park in the center of the UC Irvine campus.

The event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., is free and open

to the public. Call (949) 824-4883 for more information.