The Congressional Hispanic Caucus program is an ongoing effort to tap student emerging leaders to become active proponents and advocates on public policy issues of interest to them.

Fifty emerging student leaders are selected each year to participate in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual Public Policy Conference in Washington DC.

The students attend plenaries and issue forums covering numerous topics of importance to the Hispanic community, and spend a day in the 'Ready to Lead' program, which focuses on issues of importance to Latino youth, and how to mobilize Latino youth to become and remain engaged in crafting solutions to public policy challenges.

The students are then tasked with a project that focuses on a public policy issue of personal importance - and they present their findings to an interest group of their choice. The students have key resources they can tap for support; at the conference, each student is assigned a mentor from the professional community who then attends issue forums with them and serves as resource support for the students as they work on their projects.

Students who complete the project are honored on Capitol Hill in the winter, with Congressmen Van Hollen present.

To view photos from the March 6, 2008 reception on Capitol Hill with Congressmen Wynn and Van Hollen please click here.

To view photos of the most recent group of Student Emerging Leaders, who participated in the September 2008 conference, click here.

This program is modeled after the Congressional Black Caucus project, which MCBRE launched in 2005; you can read more about that program here.