Latino Learning Center builds bright futures amid echoes of the past

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Since its inception 44 years ago, Houston's Latino Learning Center has changed thousands of lives.

Located in the East End, the center offers services to help every member of the family, including adult vocational programs, which teach both electrical and air conditioning skills.

Rogelio Plancarta proudly showed us a picture of his four daughters.

He said they're the reason he works all day in construction, then comes to study electricity at Latino Learning Center.

"I got two kids," student Pedro Guzman said.

Guzman came to Latino Learning Center to advance his career too, but he said he's taking an A/C course especially for his boys.

"Basically what I want to do is learn something that I can teach them or leave with them, in case they want to do something else," Guzman said.

The two men may have very different stories, but both share the same goals.

Just like every other person who's walked through the doors over the last 44 years in East Downtown, they're looking for a better future at a place with a past that started in 1976.

"I'm 83," founder John Aleman said. "I perhaps don't have as much time as I once did, but, uh, I'll be here until the last day."

Aleman is the only living founder today, and one of three who came up with the idea of creating a community center for the area.

Together, they imagined what a then-rundown, vacant building could be at the corner of Polk and Scott streets.

"And so I said, 'Frank, if you're crazy enough to start this building project, I'll be crazy enough to go along with you and we'll start it.' And, and that was in 1976, and we were not able to open the doors until 1979. And that's when we started classes."

The classes are low cost and typically in the evenings, convenient since most work full-time during the day.

"We're on a shoestring budget," Aleman said. "We don't want to charge more because the students can't afford more. We, we can only... they can only afford the bare minimum."

Aleman said it's a labor of love, and while he's poured much of his own hard-earned money into the center, their work is far from done.

Unfortunately, the building itself has seen better days as East Downtown continues to grow around it.

The nonprofit's president and CEO, Rodolfo Gonzalez, explained renovations are needed, along with repairs for their air conditioning and roof.

They also need donations and support for their other programs since they offer affordable housing to veterans and the disabled.

In 1985, in fact, the Latino Learning Center became the first Hispanic community agency to develop HUD-assisted housing for the low-income elderly.

Jeanie Aleman has been by her husband's side for the last 58 years and says this place is special.

"But then we also were fortunate enough that we were able to help people like Hispanic Chamber of Commerce," she said. "They had their first meeting upstairs when they had started under George Colorado."

Even more memorable have been the thousands of success stories the couple has heard over the years, and they all start with a dream -- just like Mr. Aleman's all those years ago.

He recalled a woman he met while in the city on an errand.

"She came to me and she said, 'You know what? I was making $1.25 an hour and now I'm making $12 an hour working for the city,'" John Aleman recalled. "'I can afford to send my children to school and we are doing much better now.'"

Friday, the Latino Learning Center will host its Humanitarian Awards Luncheon at the Wortham Theatre Center to commemorate 44 years of service, and to honor a group of angels in the community who have left their mark on Houston.

Tickets are still available for the Humanitarian Awards Luncheon. Email Rodolfo Gonzalez for more information.

ABC13 is a proud sponsor of the Latino Learning Center's Humanitarian Awards Luncheon.