ABOUT US | The Oscar Romero Center for Community Health & Education

The Oscar Romero Center improves the lives of children living in

poverty, and domestic violence locally and abroad.

MISSION

Our mission is to positively impact the health, education, and well-being of children and their families in the North Texas area, and in El Salvador.

METHOD

The Oscar Romero Center focuses on providing group and individual support to local Latino/a community specifically with regard to: domestic violence, anxiety, depression, adolescent issues, emotional and physical trauma, and overcoming grief and loss. The ORC is also committed to strengthening families by encouraging the development of parenting skills and supporting overall family growth. In addition, the ORC provides assistance with navigating the vicissitudes of immigration, and the transitions which immigrant families inevitably face.

Furthermore, the Oscar Romero Center is engaged in reaching beyond our borders to support an elementary school in San Salvador, El Salvador. The school, which is located in the Alta Miraflores area, is severely impoverished, and the average family lives on less than $1 per day. The ORC assists greatly in providing psychological support, education and meals for 275 children every year. The impact of the ORC’s involvement within this community cannot be overstated. Their indefatigable efforts are daily transforming the lives of the children, their families, and the community.

MEANS

Locally, the ORC has received help from two churches in Dallas. Cox Chapel at Highland Park United Methodist Church provided a grant for a year of domestic violence education, and Lovers Lane United Methodist Church funded the first Christmas party in 2013. These donations are greatly appreciated; however, the community needs remain immense.

The ORC has also gained a small amount of governmental support from El Salvador's Ministry of Education, but the greatest struggle persists: the lack of ample resources to fund educational projects, provide supplies, and pay for meals.

GOAL

The Oscar Romero Center's goal is to find ways to sustain the education and care for the well-being of the Latino/a community both locally and abroad. Our dream is to build a junior high health clinic which will provide the much needed health care which is often unavailable, as well as to build community centers which will provide a safe environment for children to enjoy a sense of belonging without living in fear. Donations or support of any kind are very much appreciated and will be used to help children in the North Texas area and in El Salvador.

North Texas

As the foreign-born population has grown, so has the population of their children. Immigrant-origin children have become the fastest growing segment of the national child population. Thirty percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are first- or second-generation immigrants, and by 2020, one in three children below the age of 18 will be the child of an immigrant.

Because social service organizations are, and increasingly will be, serving immigrant adults and their children in a variety of settings, including schools, community centers, clinics, and hospitals, they need to be aware of the complex transformation in demographics and consider its implications. ORC centers attention on providing psychological services to immigrant individuals and families and educational services to various and different community groups to help them understand the shifting demographics of American society and the new immigrant communities.

El Salvador

El Salvador is the smallest of the Spanish-speaking countries in Central America. Civil war, natural disasters, and a lack of economic development have dangerously drained the resources of this small nation. El Salvador’s primary export and cash crop, coffee, was seriously affected by the Civil War and by the drop in world coffee prices. High levels of unemployment and the privatization of many public services, such as health and education, have also contributed to economic hardship. Nearly one quarter of Salvadorans live on less than $1 per day, and overhalf live on less than $2 per day.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), reports that 80 percent of Salvadoran children suffer from cruelty. In the Alta Miraflores community in San Salvador, children live with domestic abuse -- physical, verbal and sexual.