Environment

National Park Service Reaches Out To Latinos

By Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez / Senior Field Correspondent

Published January 27, 2012 at 6:22 AM PST

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

Pecos Mission Ruins with Mystery Orb at Pecos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, Pecos, New Mexico.

Latinos & National Parks

The National Park Service has developed a new program to connect with Latino communities across the country. It’s part of an overall effort to recognize the country’s ethnically diverse cultures.

The new program is called the American Latino Heritage Fund. It will help raise money to create programs to lure Hispanics into national parks.

The fund is part of the National Park Foundation, a non-profit created by congress to help preserve and care for the national parks.

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Midy Aponte, head of the fund, says the agency will also help identify sites throughout the country that can be designated as national landmarks that directly reflect local Latino communities.

"We cannot ignore this population any longer," Aponte said. "It’s booming, and so we want to make sure that we recognize this need right now and we engage them and we infuse desire to take ownership of parks and to take ownership of history."

Aponte says the park foundation established a similar program 10 years ago to identify the historical contributions made by African Americans.

Environment

Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez

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Nadine is a Senior Field Correspondent (Phoenix) who focuses on stories throughout the southwest and issues that directly affect Arizona’s Latino community. She is an Emmy-nominated journalist and a Telly Award winner. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism and earned a Masters in Education from Northern Arizona University. She comes from a lengthy background in communications. Her broadcasting career includes Arizona’s PBS station KAET-TV. She was a producer and correspondent for the public affairs programs Horizon and Horizonte. While in Chicago, she hosted on-air bilingual pledge drives for WTTW Channel 11 (PBS), making her the only bilingual pledge host at the time. She was a general assignment reporter for Tribune Company’s ChicagoLand Television News, Univision affiliate WCIU-TV Channel 26 and WYCC-TV. She also worked for Comiskey Park (now U.S. Cellular Field), the home of the Chicago White Sox and United Center (Chicago Bulls) Scoreboard Operations. She co-produced a bilingual television parenting program on both Chicago’s Telemundo and WYCC-TV Channel 20. Aside from her broadcasting career, she served in various roles in public relations, community outreach, and marketing. Her extensive public sector experience extends to several departments of the City of Chicago, Mayor’s Advisory Council on Latino Affairs, and the U.S. Congress. Other professional experience includes Vice President of Community Outreach for the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee. Currently, she mentors and teaches public radio writing and reporting to inner city students and participates in journalism workshops for high school students throughout the Phoenix area. Her goal is to teach journalism in a higher education institution, while continuing her mentorship initiative. She was born in Puerto Rico to Puerto Rican and Belgian parents, and raised on Chicago’s southside in La Villita (a predominantly Mexican community). This diverse background taught her valuable lessons in various Latino cultures and informs her insight into issues of great interest to Latino families and business community.

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