In 2024, Centro will be moving to its new building on Hughes Place, just around the corner from its present facility on Badger Road. It’s a huge facility that is costing $18 million to build. They are also raising an additional $2 million of transitional funds to allow Centro to solidify and expand its programming as it also looks to see what the future holds. What is central to Coller and the staff of Centro is that it is a building where people feel at home, a community plaza where they can have their needs met, whether through service or companionship. The new building will have the ambiance of the community plaza uniting it from the open spaces outside to the community spaces to the staff offices. It will welcome all within its facilities.

“This plaza is about the community,” Coller said. “This is the plaza that you would find in your home town, where you go and meet there on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a space where you can interact with your boyfriend because your family will let you. Or you can go and buy the things you were hoping to get at the end of the week. You can go and just mindfully hang out. Our community does so much. We work so much. We’re always working. Our kids are working. Our parents are working. Everyone is working. This is going to be a place of peace, of reflection and yeah, we’re going to have fun in this community and music and all of that. But you can also go and just sit down and be, kind of what we used to do in the plaza. The new building is going to have a rhythm of the plaza throughout. Sometimes for our community, there are these markers. This is plaza. This is that. There is going to be a sense, a feeling of the plaza throughout the building, so you can feel it there. It’s a different tone.”

Centro will have room to grow its present programming as the Latino community continues to grow.

“We have an intentional plan to expand the capacity to see kids at the new building,” Coller said. “So I think what COVID demonstrated was you can do programming in the schools. But we also need to have a space where our kids can be outside, not necessarily at the school building. They can be outside the school building. We are hoping to increase the number of kids whom we see in the community. And then continue to have the breathing room that the campaign will give us to partner with the school district to improve things in the school district.”

Centro will also continue to focus on the quantity and quality of the jobs that Latinos are filling.

“We’re also really intentional in our workforce stuff right now,” Coller said. “It’s not just about jobs. It’s about the sectors where we need to be. We take a very social justice lens in working with our employers, living our values of understanding what needs to be done better so that individuals can be hired, but also retained. I want to see people in the tech sector. I want to see people in the health sector. I want to see our community in the finance sector. We talk a lot about wealth building in communities of color. That can’t happen if you don’t go to the bank and the lending system reflects our community. We want to be in that space.”

And in this new plaza, people will be able to find the healing that they need, whether it is through a counselor or through each other.

“We have the only bilingual, bi-cultural certified peer support trainer in Dane County, Monica, who just got certified,” Coller said. “We’re going to do a peer support program here at Centro that really values lived experience. You can get paid for that. You don’t have to have a certain immigration status for that. And what that says is, ‘Yes, you can go sit down with a case manager, which is the program that is growing at Centro. But if you need deeper support or you just want to talk for a few hours, where you want to just to have coffee, I’ll be there for you for that. And that is part of the support and healing that you deserve to continue to become a better person.’”

Centro will also have some partners join them in the new building.

“We have Play and Learn here,” Coller said. “The immigration work — it hasn’t been announced yet — will continue. We’re going to be bringing in the Community Immigration Law Center. They are going to become part of the program at Centro. We’ll be bringing in more law students and fellows. Our HC Navigator Program is growing. Lourdes is now doing a statewide initiative. Lourdes is the only bilingual, bicultural health insurance navigator in Dane County. The majority of Latinos in Wisconsin are eligible for health benefits. But we have the lowest enrollment. So when it comes to your well-being — your quality of life — it needs to be promoted. And Lourdes is a hustler. She’s leading what is called Health Latina. It’s a statewide connection of navigators, peer specialists and other people who support health insurance and well-being.

In raising funds for the building and initial operating funds, Centro has not had a “hat in hand begging” approach. Rather, it has been looking for equal partners with similar values to further Centro’s mission.

“We are intentional with corporate partners whom we have at the table,” Coller said. “These are relationships where there have been frank conversations around what it means to build something together or support programming at Centro. The ones that we have are the ones that see things the way that we see things. I’ve said ‘no’ a lot or I haven’t approached people because their views just don’t align in our perspective. And I think that is important for our families to see. Certain things you can buy; other things you can’t. I think if we did that more, we would have a sense of who we are as people of color and just try to understand that we can do things on our own while pressuring systems to catch up and innovate alongside us.”

And it is most important to Coller that the community owns the new building.

“I don’t like it when buildings are all a part of outsiders pitching in,” Coller said. “We talk a lot about that with graduates of our workforce program and our families that come to Zumba. We talk about what it means to give and build something together. People assume that we don’t have the capacity to do that. But even if you put a tiny amount of something in, you are a part of that story and you own it. And we have to stop this narrative of outsiders owning spaces where there are people of color. So the community campaign is going to be based on that. I really want everybody to come to the table, not just so that we finish it, but more because we owe it to ourselves.”

Forty years ago, the creation of a community space that will be Centro’s new home could hardly have been even a dream. But now it will continue to house the values and mission that have sustained Centro throughout its history. And that is the fulfillment of what they wished for so many years ago.

For information about donating to Centro Hispano’s capital campaign, visit www.micentro.org or email Karen Menendez Coller at karen@micentro.org.