On July 26, 2025, the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame concluded this year's Cross Cultural Leadership Program. Since 2006, ILS has provided room, board, and a modest stipend to Latino studies supplementary majors and minors eager to engage in real life challenges addressed by community based organizations in cities with dense Latino immigrant populations
In late May, twenty undergraduate students jumped on an airplane to immerse themselves in five communities and twelve organizations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., El Paso, and South Bend. CCLP is an eight week, unpaid internship experience that places students in a household together to learn to cook, clean, and live in a community different from their own. Students become lifelong friends with peers who want to change the world, one neighborhood, and one organization at a time.
ILS developed partnerships with 12 nonprofit organizations over the past year. Whle many organizations have hosted students in the past, each year the ILS team visits the sites and meets a new group of mentors and supervisors to match up with undergraduates interested in pursuing service, policy, and management careers. Internships engage students in legal aid, financial education, human services, accompaniment, conference planning, immigration policy, and much more. New partner organizations included the Spanish Education Development Center in Washington, DC; Notre Dame’s Chicago Congregations Project; Catholic Charities of Ft. Wayne/South Bend; The Campaign for College Opportunity in Los Angeles; and Las Americas Immigrant Rights Center in El Paso. Returning organizations are featured below.
Dr. Jessala Grijalva, Post Doctoral Research Scholar at the Institute for Latino Studies developed a special course for the new South Bend d El Paso cohorts. Both cities piloted the program in prior years and summer 2025 the internships and partnership took hold. Dr. Grijalva engaged students in weekly discussion addressing organizational behavior in a period of change in the country.
“The students from El Paso shared what they were seeing on a daily basis in their work at the border. Unless you are from Texas, not many students know what implications national policies may have on daily life in communities on the southern border,” said Dr. Grijalva.
Dr. Karen Richman, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of the Practice (anthropology) taught the CCLP course on Latino immigrant communities to Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles cohorts. She has been teaching the academic course for the past twelve summers. Her syllabus begins with reflection on the meanings of accompaniment and compassionate service. Then, she leads students in a comparative study of the cities where they are immersed to explore the heterogeneity of Latinidad in the US and the themes of immigration, labor, transnationalism, cultural citizenship, and social movements. Students reflect critically and creatively on the assigned readings, films, and performance arts through weekly short essays, creative writing, poetry, podcasts and photo essays, an interview of a community leader, and a final project and paper.
She shares, “Our students were so moved, and so transformed by their experiences at their sites that they expressed themselves through poetry, art, spoken word, and mixed art during our final presentations at the National Museum of Mexican Art. Our site supervisors did more than teach job skills; they also guided these students in their career discernment. This can only be done by a process of self discovery. By empowering others, they empower themselves.”
CCLP 2025 Spotlights:
Returning Partnerships:
- HOPE Border Institute
- Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center
- Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic
- Mexican Americal Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF)
- Chrysalis
- Self Help Graphics & Art
- The Campaign for College Opportunity
- The Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership
- National Museum of Mexican Art
- The Resurrection Project
- Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR)
- Unidos US
- League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)