Brennan AngelRobert Flores, Cal Poly agriculture education and communication professor, will be honored as one of the Central Coast’s most influential Latinos on March 10.
Flores was one of 28 people who were chosen for the award, which is a program put on by the Santa Maria-based newspaper Latino Today. The recipients of the award are from a variety of fields, including government, business, education, social work, journalism and nonprofit work.
“We selected Bob Flores for a number of reasons. One was that he is performing and has performed some really important functions in our community, like being a long-time trainer of young people who are going to go out there and become teachers in the agricultural field,” said Jesse Chavarria, editor of Latino Today.
Flores was also chosen for the award for his involvement in a variety of Latino initiatives over the years, including his help in founding the Latino Outreach Council and Vision Unida.
Vision Unida is a local leadership development group that was formed from the Latino Outreach Council. The idea of the group is to educate the underrepresented population and to assist them in becoming more involved in civic affairs in the county.
“From the name Vision Unida, united vision, you can tell that the focus of the program initially was to get the Latino population, who was pretty much silent in a lot of the affairs in the county, more active,” Flores said.
Vision Unida has graduated 11 classes, comprised mostly of working adults who have completed the 13-week program since it started in 1994.
When Flores first came to Cal Poly in 1983, he was one of only four Latino professors.
“Things have changed over the years and I don’t think it’s been by accident. Somebody has to encourage the Latino population to get more involved,” Flores said. “I really believe that people need to be contributors to the betterment of their community. I’m a firm believer of that.”
Cal Poly is No. 2 in the nation in graduating Latinos in agriculture, but Flores said there is still work to do.
“We still have a long way to go, don’t get me wrong. If you look at Cal Poly, (it) is not representative of the high school population of California,” Flores said.
This is the second year that Latino Today has honored Latinos on the Central Coast. Last year they honored 50 people, including Cal Poly journalism professor George Ramos, because there was such a backlog of people who had not been recognized.
“One of the reasons we started this award is that no one was honoring people who are Latino, who are leaders, who are doing great things for our community. As far as we could tell, no one was paying any attention to them or what they were doing,” Chavarria said. “As the people running the paper, we come in contact with these people on a daily basis and thought, ‘somebody ought to be doing something for them and thanking them for their service.'”