El Futuro has received grant funding from the TELUS North Carolina Community Board for its LAYA (Latino Adolescent and Young Adult) program. With this grant, LAYA will expand support to Latino youth and families by expanding access to culturally responsive mental health care, uplifting youth voices, and empowering parents to support their children’s emotional well-being.
“We know that stigma and barriers often prevent adolescents and families in our Latino community from accessing care,” said Luke Smith, Executive Director of El Futuro. “With this support from TELUS, we’re able to meet families where they are — in their neighborhoods, homes, and schools — and offer tools and family connections that support healing through culturally aligned approaches.”
This generous donation will empower El Futuro to amplify youth voices through our Latine Youth Advisory Council and expand bilingual family education sessions. As a result, 1,150 Latine adolescents and young adults (ages 13–24) across 66 North Carolina counties—including 50 rural counties—will gain access to culturally responsive, out-of-school mental health support.
“Through our partnerships with charities supporting youth, we understand the challenges young people in these situations face,” said Ebony Burt, North Carolina Community Board Chair. “We are proud to be able to support El Futuro with a North Carolina Community Board grant in order to help them break down barriers to care and uplift the voices and leadership of Latino youth and families.”
About TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods
TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods is a leading global technology provider delivering data insights and digital solutions to agriculture, food and consumer goods customers in 60 countries with a view to creating better producer-to-consumer outcomes. Backed by a global team of 1,600 experts across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, China, and Australia, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods offers a growing list of integrated solutions for analytics, data, supply chain, trade promotion, farm and livestock production management. By leveraging technology and data, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods is creating a unified, trusted and sustainable value chain to enable more efficient production and logistics, while lowering the impact on the environment, to progress its vision of transforming supply chains and making the future friendly.
For more information please visit telus.com/agcg and follow @TELUS_AGCG on Twitter and TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods on LinkedIn.
Alvely Alcántara, LCSW
Rossy C. Garcia, MEd 
Katy Sims, MD 
Everardo Aviles, LCSW, LCAS (Eve)
As a medical anthropologist and social work researcher, Dr. Gulbas’ research embodies interdisciplinarity through the integration of applied theories of health and human development with qualitative and ethnographic methodologies. Her work seeks to understand how people—children, families, and providers—navigate complex sociocultural landscapes in the pursuit of mental health. Most of her work, to date, focuses attention on developing more robust interpretations of suicide risk. With funding from the National Institutes of Mental Health, this body of research has contributed to advancements in theoretical and empirical knowledge of the broader contexts within which youth suicide risk is situated. 
R. Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez is a developmental psychologist and an assistant professor of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Barajas-Gonzalez is the principal investigator of a study that examines the impact of immigration-related threat and stress on school communities. She earned a PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia University and hold a BA in human biology from Stanford University. Dr. Barajas-Gonzalez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a first gen college student.
Dr. Parra-Cardona is an Associate Professor in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHSSW) at the University of Texas at Austin. At the SHSSW, he serves as Coordinator for Mexico and Latin American initiatives. He also serves as Area Director for Research at the UT Austin Latino Research Institute. Dr. Parra-Cardona’s program of research is focused on the cultural adaptation of evidence-based parenting interventions for low-income Latinx populations in the US and Latin America.
Bianka Reese, PhD, MSPH is a research scientist and program evaluator specializing in adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health. Her previous research in the experiences of Latinx LGBTQ+ youth stems from her work as the Research and Evaluation Manager at SHIFT NC (Sexual Initiatives For Teens), where she led largescale evaluations of multilevel, community-based sexual health promotion initiatives and research projects aimed at elevating the voices of diverse youth in North Carolina. Dr. Reese is currently the Senior Research Strategist at Creative Research Solutions, LLC, an award-winning national evaluation, research, and assessment firm.
Tania Connaughton-Espino, MPH is an independent researcher focused on adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health. Her interest in the experiences of Latinx LGBTQ+ youth stems from her previous work with SHIFT NC (Sexual Initiatives For Teens), where she led the training and evaluation department, conducted capacity-building workshops for youth serving professionals including on the topic of how to be more affirming of LGBTQ youth, and from her extensive experience working with the Latinx population in NC.
Maru Gonzalez, EdD is an Assistant Professor and Youth Development Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. Her areas of inquiry include youth development with a focus on activism, social justice, and the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people across familial, school, and community contexts. 
Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, PhD
Hector Y. Adames, PsyD