Our History
The Concilio is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization that has served the Greater Dallas area since 1981. Our mission is to advocate and enhance the quality of life for Hispanics through community partnerships. Our organization was created to address the lack of culturally and linguistically effective programs for Hispanics by traditionally non-Hispanic service providers. At that time, there were very few programs for Hispanics that were presented in culturally appropriate ways and in Spanish. The issue continues to be relevant today as the Hispanic population, now the majority population in Dallas County, continues to grow, and providers cannot keep up with the demand for services that must be implemented through cultural understanding. We assisted a network of organizations (our affiliates, mostly other nonprofit agencies) by providing them with specific tools to build their capacity to effectively serve their Hispanic clients.
During our first decade, we recognized that a natural development of our mission was to create and implement programs in response to the gaps in services as voiced by the providers we assisted. These programs include parent engagement classes and community health services.
An issue for the local Hispanic community in the early 1990’s was the lack of free education in Spanish regarding diabetes, which disproportionately affects Hispanics. From this need came our Community Health program, which helps Hispanics overcome challenges with regards to health care. Our diabetes initiative had the distinction of being presented in 1998 at the annual conferences of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Diabetes Translation and again in 2006 at the CDC Annual Diabetes and Obesity Conference. Additionally, our walking program was recognized at the same conference as a success as a physical activity intervention targeting a Texas minority population. Our Community Health program was nationally recognized in July 2007 by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) with a Family Strengthening Award.
Our Education program, begun in 2002, addresses the high dropout and low college enrollment rates of Hispanics that are often due to their lack of understanding of the education system in the United States. The Concilio’s program helps the entire family understand the importance of education by teaching parents their role, rights and responsibilities as these relate to their children’s academic success. Our program was selected by the United Way for the pilot year of its Destination: Graduation initiative in 2005-06. Destination: Graduation aims to reduce the dropout rate in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) using a multi-pillar approach, including parent involvement, mentoring and college preparation. As the sole providers of the parent involvement component, we graduated 182 parents from Samuell High School and were chosen to participate again each school year since.
In the 1990’s, partnerships with other service providers were begun. These have included a scholarship program with Neiman Marcus and research projects with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, among others.
The Concilio staff includes bilingual and bicultural professionals experienced in working effectively with the Hispanic community. Our dynamic volunteer board of directors is made up of experienced corporate professionals and influential Hispanic community leaders who guide the organization. Agency staff and volunteers are recognized throughout the community as experts on Hispanic issues, and we serve more than 10,000 individuals each year through our programs.
In 2009, The Concilio’s board of directors went through a strategic planning process designed to focus and refine the direction of our agency over the next few years. Throughout, the primary goal of our board was to develop a structure that provides impact for the greatest needs affecting our local community. The process revealed and reinforced our core strength of providing community education, particularly regarding health and parent involvement.
As a result of these findings, some very difficult decisions had to be made, including the decision that our future focus would be dedicated to our core strengths. Therefore, our Community Building program, which provided Hispanic cultural competency assistance to our network of affiliate organizations, was suspended. In response to this decision and to portray our desire to serve all of North Texas, our name was changed from Dallas Concilio of Hispanic Service Organizations to The Concilio. We are excited about this new focus and the opportunity to effect systemic change in the education and health of our community.