Latino community leaders from 85 communities across ten states will convene in two simultaneous sessions of the Latino Academy at the Mission Inn in Riverside and at the y;O. Ranch in Kerrville, Texas. The Latino Academy will train 270 voter registration project officers on strategies and techniques to organize their communities to mobilize hundreds of thousands of new voters during the final leg of the "Latino Vote 2000" campaign. The Latino Academy is where the organizers will learn the nuts and bolts skills while developing a field plan in which they will take back to their community to implement. An additional focus of the training will be on leveraging important current issues to organize and mobilize the Latino electorate.

Latinos throughout the country will playa significant role in this years elections. Antonio Gonzalez, SVREP President, comments, "The Latino Academy is the starting point for the most massive electoral mobilization our community has ever seen." Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), has joined forces with two sister organizations, the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI) and the New York City-based Northeast Voter Education Project (NVEP) to raise Latino participation to a record eight (8) million registered voters and six (6) million votes cast in this November's presidential election. As part of this effort, SVREP is implementing a multi-stage field program in thirteen (13) states. "These two simultaneous Academies will train SVREP leaders from 85 communities in ten states. They will begin to work immediately afterward. In mid-August, SVREP will train an additional 150 leaders from 55 communities in thirteen states, a launch another wave of voter projects," continued Gonzalez.

The Latino Academy will also have an Alumni tract which will focus on issues including a talk on redistricting, a new amnesty for the undocumented, normalizing relations with Cuba, fundraising and media training. This group will receive indepth knowledge and access to research and data surrounding the various issues.

The Academy will take place from July 15th -18th, at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. A second
Academy is taking place from July 13t -16th, at the Y.O. Ranch in Kerville, TX.

SVREP is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that has worked towards increasing Latino
participation in the electoral process for more than 25 years. Through the implementation of
Voter Registration, Voter Education, and Get out the Vote programs, SVREP has worked in over
400 communities and has trained over 50,000 leaders.

The SVREP Latino Academies are funded through grants from AT &T , Verizon and State Farm
Insurance.