La Plazita Institute, Inc. (LPI) is a non-profit grassroots organization in Albuquerque, NM. La Plazita engages New Mexico’s youth, elders and communities in a comprehensive, holistic and cultural approach. Designed around the philosophy of La Cultura Cura or culture heals, La Plazita’s programs engages New Mexico’s youth, elders and communities to draw from their own roots and histories to express core traditional values of respect, honor, love, and family. LPI serves primarily Latino/a/x/e, Chicano/a/x/e, Mexican, Native American, Land Based Indigenous communities, LGBTQ, previously Incarcerated, returning citizens, and people on probation and adjudication. LPI has provided cultural healing services to Albuquerque’s most vulnerable youth, adult populations and their families. Most of our participants are of Latino/a/x/e, Chicano/a/x/e, and Native American heritage, are previously incarcerated and/or gang involved, and come from families with multi-generational legacies of poverty, gang involvement, and substance abuse addiction. There is an enormous need for this work as our population tends to fall through the cracks of conventional social service institutes. La Plazita strives to improve the health and well-being of Latino/a/x/e/, Chicano/a/x/e, Native American youth and adult inmates through traditional cultural services, and facilitate healing, core identity and self-efficacy. Through these avenues, we seek to:

• Reduce incarceration, recidivism risk and adjudication of Latino/a/x/e, Chicano/a/x/e, and Native American youth and adult inmates through innovative, drug-free income generating activities that promote entrepreneurship, art and educational development of high risk area youth and inmates by increasing the exposure of these individuals and families to LPI activities.
• Increase the organizational capacity of La Plazita to sustain its healing services while retaining its community-based and indigenous healing philosophy.
• Reduce race-based and ethnic disparities of Latino/a/x/e, Chicano/a/x/e, and Native American inmates through engagement in critical prevention work and systemic policy efforts collaboratively with local, state and national stakeholders.

Such strategies include reducing the school to prison pipeline through development and implementation of culturally appropriate strategies and best practices to reform the juvenile justice system and address key barriers for Latino/a/x/e, Chicano/a/x/e, and Native youth and families.

The FoodCorps service member at La Plazita institute is a part of the New Mexico cohort that includes 10 service members across 8 different service sites. Service sites in New Mexico are located in what has come to be known as the cities of Santa Fe, Bernalillo, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Anthony. We acknowledge and seek to continually honor that all land within the present borders of New Mexico were originally entrusted and stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. Through a journey of cultural humility, we serve at each site with the knowledge that each of these geographical and cultural boundaries have been constructed as a result of unjust historical events. New Mexico prides itself on our population, which consists of a majority of People of Color, and the deep well of cultural assets each ethnic group adds to our communities. As a result of racist ideologies and concurrent policies that have systematically marginalized these populations, New Mexico currently has the lowest quality of life for children and some of the highest hunger and poverty rates in the nation. With this historical pretext and a systems change approach as the foundation, service members will engage with children, families and communities to offer food education through a decolonial, equitable, anti-racist lens with support from site supervisors, community, and state staff.