News (Noticias) for September 6th, 2008

I had the opportunity to see the beginning of Camp Obama Colorado, a Latino community leadership training held in Denver and I have to say that I was impressed.

160 people had registered and although I don’t know the final count of those actually attending the house was essentially packed. They were there from various parts of Colorado from all age groups to partake in what Obama’s Latino team calls “helping local Latino leaders empower themselves with the skills to mobilize voters in their Colorado communities.”

Now what impressed me was that this was actually physical action backed by Obama’s money to work on a grassroots approach. Throughout my three years of covering Hispanic & Latino news, I have heard and seen a lot of lip service and little action from a variety of sources. Similar sentiments have been shared with me many times by fellow Hispanos. So this approach literally made me smile.

In case you don’t know Obama has pledged $20 million to Latino outreach. This is more than any party has ever earmarked to target our growing powerful group and just the start of things to come in. Instead on simply purchasing ads and throwing them up on Spanish-Language media some of that money is going to this project that has already been held in 8 states. This runs counter to the stereotype of today’s marketing approach to our diverse community. This is a brilliant stroke if you ask me and fits into the team’s overall goal of registering as many Latinos as possible. After all, advertising on a national Spanish news TV program would reach only 39% of Hispanic voter and although this is from a 2004 Pew Hispanic study it still reflects today’s basic Hispanic language demographics.

Congrats to Temo Figueroa and his team for this innovative approach on a national level and to Barack Obama for supporting them.