Aspen Institute Summit to Focus on Critical Role of Latinos in Future Advancement of America
The Aspen Institute, a group formed as a forum for values-based leadership will host on Tuesday Aug. 16th its 2016 "America's Future Summit," whose focus will be on "Reimagining Opportunity in a Changing Nation" where the population and influence of Latinos is on the rise, but during a time when opportunity isn't equally distributed.
To address this quandary, the Institute will look to use its upcoming summit to "reimagine the way we approach and concede opportunity including how it is fully realized."
"If we don't, we risk leaving behind a generation of Latinos and limiting America's future prosperity," the Institute said on its website.
The Aspen Institute's "Latinos and Society Program" is the group who masterminded this year's forum in line with its official aim of the creation of broad awareness of growth and the importance of the Latino community to the future competitiveness and success of the United States.
As such, the summit will feature experts and executives not only from the Aspen Institute itself, but from and representing all different corporate, political and private entities.
Among this year's featured guests are Target's Executive Vice President; the Founder, Chairwoman and CEO of Care.com; Mayors of the cities of Fresno and Los Angeles; Special Assistant to the President and Senior Deputy Director of Public Engagement at the White House; and many other role models ready to speak on and inspire an audience of Latinos and non-Latinos alike.
"The increasingly critical role that Latino Americans will play in our nation's future means ensuring that Latinos have access to healthy communities, quality schools, good jobs and safe environments, and that they can influence policies that facilitate positive contributions to society," said Latinos and Society Program Chairwoman Monica Lozano and Executive Director Abigail Golden-Vazquez in a statement.
"While tangible progress has been made in many areas, more intentional collaboration is required between government, business, philanthropy and community based organizations for Latinos and other communities to realize the American Dream and to advance opportunity."
On the agenda for Tuesday's summit are a number of various talking points that will feature both advice and life experience as learned by panel leaders and to be taught and discussed among attendees.
The morning's first two panels will both focus on the requirement of collaboration among many people in order to successfully create opportunities. The panels will examine a cross-section of approaches that its speakers deem "essential to envisioning new ways to nurture opportunity."
Following those panels will be a conversation on "The Power of Boundless Compassion" featuring representatives of Homeboy Industries (a group that works to provide training and support to formerly gang-involved and incarcerated men and women), from the company's Founder and Executive Director to a recently hired trainee.
These men and women will bring with them to their panel an important reality of life; "that overcoming boundaries to opportunity requires a vision in which all are deserving of and have equitable access to such opportunity."
During this panel, real life experiences will be shared by those who seized opportunity in a unique and/or powerful way to better their own lives and the lives of others.
"Opportunity is an ideal deeply embedded in the American values of equity, fairness and nobility...opportunity means that everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential," Lozano and Golden-Vazquez said. "It means economic security, a voice in decisions that affect all of us, and a sense of responsibility toward each other...to protect and expand opportunity for our and future generations."
Later on in the afternoon on Tuesday a panel featuring the aforementioned White House Senior Deputy Director as well as ambassadors and coordinators of youth-oriented organizations will speak on civic action and how to unlock the potential to take on this responsibility by a new generation of young Americans.
The members of this panel recently attended an Aspen Institute Latinos and Society Program conference in order to develop new and innovative solutions to addressing low rates of Millenial civic participation, particularly within the Latino community.
At the summit these panelists will share the solutions they came up with in a bid to encourage younger generations to understand and hopefully acknowledge and adopt the notion that civic participation enables both individuals and groups to exercise power and influence over their circumstances in order to better their lives and lifestyles.
As the day's activities, events and opportunities for knowledge and discussion wind down, the final panel of the afternoon will feature the Honorable Eric Garzetti, Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, who will bring to light the challenges he's come up against and solutions he's come up with in ensuring racial and ethnic equity in urban America.
"Los Angeles is a city of the future and the program will...draw upon local talent and industries, as well as cross-cultural, cross-discipline collaborations and coalitions that can be elevated as models," said a representative of the Latinos and Society Program. "Through careful speaker and audience selection we hope to connect grass roots with grass tops, the young and not-so-young, and Latinos with non-Latinos to create linkages across different sections and industries."
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