Hacer

HACER is a nonprofit, community-based research organization that originated in 1988 as a collaborative effort between Ramsey County Human Services, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES), and Metropolitan State University to address the lack of information about Latinos and Latino issues in Minnesota's public discourse. Since 1998, HACER ha... s been housed at the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA). CURA provides space and technical support to HACER as part of its endeavor to connect University faculty and students with community-based organizations and public institutions working on significant public policy issues in Minnesota. HACER's mission is to provide the Minnesota Latino community the ability to create and control information about itself in order to affect institutional decisions and public policy. We do so through collaborative research efforts that are timely, methodologically sound and culturally appropriate. HACER engages in partnerships with community members and advocates to inform policy around immigration, education, public health, housing, criminal justice and crime prevention, social welfare, employment and income disparities, public safety, community development, migrant work, and demographic change. HACER also facilitates cooperation among agencies that serve the Latino community, and evaluates government and nonprofit programs that target Latinos in the state. For these efforts, HACER was named CLUES Community Collaborator of the Year in 2002. HACER is the only advocacy-driven, Latino-specific research organization in the Upper Midwest. As a result, a number of grassroots organizations, service providers, and policymakers have come to rely on HACER to inform their work around institutional and policy issues that impact Latinos throughout Minnesota.Read More