Since President Obama attached
some supportive dollar signs this month to his administration's proposals for
the coming fiscal year, many federal departments are creating or expanding
programs designed to benefit Latinos and other underserved constituencies.

    Among these departments:
Labor, Energy and Education.

   The Department of Labor, for
instance, is working closely with the Department of Energy to ensure all ethnic
and racial groups, often clustered in low-income brackets, have access to
training for energy-efficient and green jobs.

   Joe García, who heads Energy's
Office of Minority Economic Impact, told Hispanic Link his department is
working closely with Labor colleagues to educate Latino workers on green
technology and in small-business startups.

   "Most of the training for
green jobs is being funded out of Labor, where we have been coordinating with
Secretary Hilda Solís to a great degree," García says. 

   In January, Solís announced the
"Pathway Out of Poverty" grants, designed to help low-income populations
find jobs in energy-efficient and renewable energy industries.

   Solís is augmenting Labor's staff
of bilingual investigators to help its Occupational Safety and Health
Administration in areas such as wage theft, continuing to ensure that the workers
have access to programs that help them through the recession. 

   But perhaps most beneficial to
the nation's young Latino population is the budget proposed for education. The
Department of Education is proposing a $3 billion increase in competitive
funding for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

   The administration also beefed up
education with $9.3 billon in competitive grants to states over the next 10
years to improve the quality of early learning programs and prepare students
for success in kindergarten, a step that Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the
National Education Association, says is crucial to the school success of Latino
children. 

   "In the budget they are
saying, 'We are going to focus like a laser on the kids who need it the
most," Eskelsen says. "If you put an emphasis on early childhood
education, you give those kids a boost that's going to last. It's showing the
President understands where to put the money."

   The budget also focuses on
improving students' chances to complete college. A 2005 study by Pew Hispanic
Research Center's Rick Fry found Latino undergraduates half as likely as their
white peers to complete their post-secondary education.

    Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association
of Colleges and Universities, praised the Administration for its willingness to
listen to and work with Hispanic-serving institutions such as HACU.

   Flores cited one hands-on program
in which the U.S. departments of education and agriculture will give Latino
students an opportunity to graduate with degrees in agriculture and urban
development.

Under
this initiative, he said, Latinos studying both will participate in building
communities while working in their respective fields.

   Students receive scholarships,
counseling and admission to programs otherwise unavailable to them, Flores said.
"It helps them in various ways."  

   The assessment of League of Latin
American Citizens executive director Brent Wilkes was mixed. "The
President's budget does provide some increased support for priority issues for
the Latino community," he said, but "too much was cut at once. He is
freezing the rest of the budget, We are concerned that a lot of things are
going to get impacted,"

   He wrapped up, "We are going
to be working with the White House and Congress  to make sure that Latino communities aren't getting cut
unnecessarily."

   (Luis Carlos López, of
Washington, D.C., is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service. Email him at
[email protected],)

   ©2010