Mission and Vision

Our Mission

UNO’s mission is to challenge Hispanics to define and attain standards of excellence for themselves towards an overall enfranchisement of this community, both in a broad sense of American social growth and at the local level in terms of stable neighborhoods and healthy families.

Our Vision of the Hispanic Community: An Emerging Middle-Class

Chicago’s Hispanic community is similar to its Irish, German, and Polish counterparts, among others. As with these immigrant groups, Hispanics have come to the United States to build upon and benefit from American opportunity, working hard to create better lives for their families. Representing an historic wave of immigration to the United States, Hispanics are the newest incarnation of the American tradition.

However, like the paths of our predecessors, Hispanic immigration also carries a set of serious challenges, which will continue to try our community's ability to prosper in the United States. The nation’s largest drop-out rate, gang violence, and teenage pregnancy, among other problems, have for decades created a rift between Hispanic potential and accomplishment. Even so, practical solutions to these problems are rarely put forth. Rather, pragmatism plays second to politically-expedient and media-driven agendas that benefit by portraying Hispanics as a victimized community in need of social justice.

This depiction is hugely inaccurate. A community driven not by self-doubt but opportunity, Hispanics must be challenged to take full advantage of American possibilities through civic participation and deep investments in family, neighborhoods, and education.

Since our inception UNO has seen Hispanics rise to the occasion when presented this challenge on an individual level, employing the same determination that drives them to this country to do what is right for their families. What remains for Hispanics is to create this same type of engagement and success on a wide scale, as a healthy American community