On May 8th, Atlanta West End Rotary Member Carolina Ramos presented Mr. Berny De La Garza, president of HYPE, which is a division of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. HYPE – Hispanic Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs – is dedicated exclusively to serve as the main resource for Georgia’s aspiring future leaders. HYPE is a network of fellow millennials and links like-minded with young professionals from the metro-Atlanta area and surrounding counties.

Berny – whose background is in financial services having been a principal in a hedge fund firm – explained that HYPE connects, develops and empowers young professionals and entrepreneurs through community, economic and leadership opportunities. HYPE now has 130 members who pay $100 each to be HYPE members - 60% are entrepreneurs.

Carolina is herself a fine example of HYPE’s value: she noted when she came to Sandy Springs she knew no Latinos so she joined HYPE. Her role now is as a volunteer is to engage parents living in the Fair Oaks community in Marietta City. Carolina says parents are often out of touch and have difficulty connecting to the mainstream of life and employment in Marietta. Berny affirms adult parents in the US are disconnected from responsibilities … because in their home countries parents have trust in the community and do not need to be as concerned in knowing constantly the whereabouts of the children like they must in the US, plus there they have no language and lifestyle barriers – quite the opposite of their situations and roles in the US. So, Berny pursues a major focus through HYPE to be vigilant of circumstances and activities of Black and Brown boys, whom he considers to be seriously “at risk” in Georgia. He and HYPE volunteers build after-school programs that concentrate on learning the schools’ curricula, understanding customs and the language.

AWER President Seals stated that Technical Colleges could provide an array of benefits and support to HYPE youth, including for those in high schools through the Technical College Systems of Georgia’s dual enrollment programs. There they can receive excellent training and can position themselves for skilled jobs making $75,000 or more annually in their chosen areas of study and employment.

Nevertheless, taking advantage of other opportunities requires Black and Brown youth to be very careful. Berny grew up participating in the Boy Scouts and in his HYPE recruitment work he naturally sought to engage kids for Scout memberships … and 35 signed up. But none followed through to join because, he explained, they and their parents were fearful of deportation treats.

Clearly, Berny De La Garza shows tremendous dedication, commitment and awareness of many issues facing Latinos. He said HYPE needs donations to support programming work with youth, and because the entire HYPE staff are volunteers, donations to HYPE maximize benefit for positively impacting youth.

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Keyway Speaker Reporters:

Jared Evans, Chris Hempfling, Neil Shorthouse