DURHAM — A $500,000 grant to Durham-based El Futuro is expected to help hundreds of additional low-income immigrant Latinos thrive at work, school, and home.

The award, announced Wednesday, was made by the Oak Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“We are blown away by the generosity of Oak Foundation and their support for people in our community who are living on the margins,” said Dr. Luke Smith, a psychiatrist, founder and executive director of the nonprofit that provides mental health and addiction counseling to Latinos in Durham and 14 counties in central North Carolina.

Kerry Brock, El Futuro’s manager of grants and strategic development, said the money will be used over four years, and is expected to help an extra 100 immigrant Latinos each year between now and 2019.

In recent years, El Futuro has served more than 1,500 members of the Latino community each year, with evidence-based mental health and addictions outpatient counseling. Latino children and families receive care at El Futuro’s two clinics — in Durham and Siler City — with a team including clinically trained substance abuse counselors, social workers, psychologists, child and adolescent psychiatrists, and marriage and family therapists.

Roughly three-quarters of those served are either stabilized or show improvement in their clinical symptoms and function better at home, work or school, according to El Futuro.

Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina experienced the sixth-fastest rate of growth in the nation of Latinos, and that trend continues. In the Triangle, the Latino population grew by 128.5 percent in this same period.

The grant will:

— Help unaccompanied minors who come into community. Recently, 54 percent of the children seen at El Futuro fell into that group.

— Provide treatments for traumatized Latinos.

— Improve access to services.

— Address workforce shortages by training professionals and supervising interns from UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and N.C. State.

Impacts of the treatments supported by the grant can already be seen, according to El Futuro’s clinical director, Karla Siu.

“I think of a young girl that we worked with recently,” she said. “Because of a history of trauma and abuse, she came to us having such terrible panic attacks that she had been unable to go to school for an entire year. After starting treatment, not only did she gain the tools to help her go back to school, but she also came in recently and showed off her report card, with all A’s and B’s. Her confidence has soared, along with her ability to grow and learn at her best. This is the type of impact that will be supported by the generous grant from Oak Foundation, and we are so grateful.

El Futuro helps Latino families with services that would not otherwise be accessible, regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. While the organization receives money from Medicaid, Health Choice, Medicare, and some private insurance, it relies on grants, contracts, corporate, and private charitable donations to support 60 percent of the costs of treating a patient.

X