Dear Friend,
D&P Creative Strategies just celebrated six successful years of operation! When we started our company, our friends and colleagues thought we were absolutely crazy to leave our respective and well-paying positions at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Together, we decided to leave the establishment and venture out on our own to change the world and D&P Creative Strategies was born in 2004.
Today, we are a thriving, well-respected small business and our services and expertise are sought out regularly in the areas of public affairs, philanthropic advising, legislative affairs, program development and political strategy. We have grown to a team of four as well as many partners.
Meet the team by clicking here.
We have a client roster reflective of companies, foundations, non-profit organizations and individuals who understand the importance of the growing influence and voice of the Latino community. We have been able to assist our clients in giving millions of dollars to national, regional, state and local Latino and LGBT organizations whose missions have synergy with the corporations and foundations we represent.
After 6 years and some amazing projects we’ve decided to write a newsletter where you can learn more about work of D&P and, more importantly, about the work of our clients that impacts communities across the country.
Sincerely,
Ingrid Duran & Catherine Pino
Co-Founders & Principals, D&P Creative Strategies
Excelencia in Education Launches Ensuring America's Future
D&P worked with our client, Excelencia in Education to launch their campaign on college completion on September 8, 2010. The EAF Latino College Completion Campaign was announced with Giselle Fernandez as the spokeswoman. In today’s knowledge driven economy, a college degree is critical to the success of a competitive workforce. Yet according to the U.S. Census, only 19 percent of Hispanics in the United States had earned an associate degree or higher in 2008. In comparison, 39 percent of whites, 28 percent of blacks, and 59 percent of Asians had earned an associate or higher in 2008. Further, demographic predictions show Latinos will represent 22 percent of the U.S. population by 2025. Given the current educational attainment levels for Latinos, the current and projected national Latino demographic growth and the demands for U.S. economic competitiveness— increasing American college degree attainment requires a policy focused on young adults generally, and Latino students specifically. To meet this challenge, Excelencia in Education introduced the national initiative, Ensuring America’s Future by Increasing Latino College Completion in April 2010. The initiative, begun with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brings to the forefront of public attention the role Latinos play in meeting the country’s college degree completion goal. Reaching the goal will involve partnerships with community-based and national organizations in education, business and workforce, Latino advocacy, media and philanthropy, high-level engagement with postsecondary and public policy leaders, analysis of public data that benchmarks national and state level Latino college degree completion, and the implementation of an outcomes-driven plan promoting promising practices and policies.
For more information on EAF, click here.
Microsoft Makes Its Largest Technology Donation Ever to a Single Los Angeles School to Help Prepare Students for Their Future
More than $1 million will enable the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center to improve student skills in science, technology, engineering and math.
LOS ANGELES — Oct. 20, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. announced it is providing the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools with a more than $1 million grant to purchase new software and hardware for the two schools at the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center. This grant will help bring state-of-the-art technology to the campus, helping bridge the technology gap of this underserved community. The grant also includes a $50,000 cash donation portion that will provide for ongoing technical support, teacher and student training, curriculum, and mentoring opportunities for students to learn about and explore careers. The goal is to create an instructional model that can be replicated and scaled throughout Los Angeles Unified School District and elevate teacher and student technology skills, thereby preparing youth for the competitive Los Angeles and U.S. job market.
For more information, click here: 
Cesar's Last Fast Washington, DC Screening
The Co-Founders of D&P launched two production companies earlier this year, Brown Beauty Productions and Milagro Productions. On November 17, 2010 Milagro Productions held a special screening and panel discussion at The National Council of La Raza.
Cesar’s Last Fast is a multi-platform, cross-media documentary film in-production about the private sacrifice and deep spiritual conviction behind Cesar E. Chavez's 40-year struggle for the humane treatment of America’s farm workers, and the impact Chavez’s legacy has on today’s generation of activist fighting for farm worker rights.
The film is built around powerful, never-before-seen footage of Cesar’s 1988 “Fast for Life,” an act of penance for not having done enough to stop growers from spraying pesticides on farm workers. The story of this 36-day, water-only fast is the film’s dramatic arc into which the filmmakers interweave the historic events that de- fined the life mission of America’s most inspiring Latino leader.
Legendary television producer, Norman Lear, generously provided the seed money for Cesar’s Last Fast though his foundation, The Lear Family Foundation. Then, in 2009 The Sundance Institute awarded Cesar’s Last Fast a Documentary Production Grant. The film has also received partial funding from the Latino Public Broadcasting Public Media Content Fund. Also, partial funding has been provided by the Alma & Morris Schapiro Fund and hundreds of community members who are passionate about presenting this story to a new generation of Americans. For more info click here.
The Harvest: Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34) Joins With Actress Eva Longoria Parker and Film Director U Roberto Romano to Protect Migrant Farmworker Children in the Fields
D&P's Milagro Productions was recruited by Eva Longoria Parker to work with Shine Global on The Harvest/La Cosecha to help fundraise and develop a political strategy in early 2009. We've held a series of events including a fundraiser at our home with Eva Longoria Parker and the Executive Producers of The Harvest, several Capitol Hill visits and a screening and panel at the US Department of Labor hosted by Secretary Hilda Solis in conjunction with the introduction of Congresswoman Roybal-Allard's Care Act. Most recently we organized a congressional briefing and screening on September 15, 2010.
To mark the anniversary of Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard’s introduction of the CARE Act legislation in September of 2009, Actress Eva Longoria Parker and Film Director U Roberto Romano joined the congresswoman on Capitol Hill for the showing of select scenes from the upcoming feature length documentary, The Harvest/La Cosecha. The film shows what many in the United States find difficult to believe; that it is legal for American children aged 12 and sometimes younger to toil unlimited hours in near 100-degree heat, harvesting the fruits and vegetables that we eat in America today.
US. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) has long sought to end this double standard that exists in America’s child labor laws. On September 16th of last year, she introduced The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act, HR 3564) that addresses the inequities and harsh conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of American children currently employed in agriculture. As of September 1 the legislation has 103 co-sponsors.
“I applaud Eva Longoria Parker, Robin Romano and Shine Global for using the power of film to shine a light on the plight of child farmworkers in The Harvest/La Cosecha. As this film documents, children in agriculture too often work in dangerous and exploitive conditions, which are illegal in every other industry. That is why I authored HR 3564, the CARE Act, which would raise labor standards and protections for farmworker children to the same level set for children in all other occupations,” Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard said.
For more information about the CARE Act, please click Lucille’s Legislation at www.house.gov/roybal-allard.
“I want to commend Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard for her leadership in Congress on the CARE Act. The plight of migrant children has been an issue very near and dear to my heart. Using my voice to help Shine Global and U Roberto (Robin) Romano to raise awareness about this moral imperative has been an incredible honor. This has been one of the most important issues I have had the opportunity to work on," said Eva Longoria Parker, one of the documentary’s executive producers.
THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA is the story of children who work as many as 14 hours a day eight months a year in the burning hot sun, without the protection of child labor laws. These children are not toiling in the fields in some far away land. They are working here, in our back yard, in America.
Not since the work of Walker Evans, has the world of these agricultural workers been so vividly and intimately depicted. As many as 400,000 migrant child workers in the US journey from their homes traveling from state to state, farm to farm, crop to crop, picking ¼ of all the produce we eat. These children are American citizens. All are working to help their families survive while sacrificing the birthright of childhood: play; stability; school. The film profiles several of them as they work through the 2009 harvest. Whose families will be “lucky” enough to get work? Which families will be separated? Which will be deported or injured or killed? Will any manage to keep their dreams alive?
Award winning filmmaker and photographer U Roberto (Robin) Romano followed 5 families over the course of two years, traversing the country from Florida to California and Texas to Michigan numerous times, giving us our most intimate, touching and disturbing look to date at the lives of the children who feed America.
THE HARVEST is being produced by Shine Global, a 501(c)(3) non-profit film production company dedicated to ending the abuse and exploitation of children worldwide through films that raise awareness, promote action and inspire political change. Shine’s first documentary, WAR DANCE, was nominated for an Academy Award and two Emmys. Contributions to Shine are used to produce its films and net profits are returned to the children it documents through local non-governmental agencies.
For more information about The Harvest, click here or for more information on the CARE Act, click here.
US-Spain Council Hosts First Forum Under the Leadership of Senator Robert Menendez in Washington, DC
D&P’s client, US-Spain Council held it’s annual forum in Washington, DC the last weekend in July under the leadership of Chairman Robert Menendez. The forum included presentations by Obama Administration Cabinet Secretaries, Geithner, Locke, Salazar and Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg along with Spanish Second Vice President and Minister of Finance Elena Salgado and Secretary General for Foreign Trade at the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade in Spain, Alfredo Bonet.
The United States-Spain Council is a forum in which Spanish and US corporate leaders, government officials and leaders in the education and cultural fields seek to promote better relations between the two countries. Next year the forum will be hosted by the Spaniards in Asturias.