Gilberto, El Centro Worker:
"When I found El Centro, I was living at the rescue mission. There is a lot of respect here, they gave me an opportunity. El Centro helps me in many ways. I don't want to be walking the street, I like to work, it makes me feel so much better about myself, I don't want to be doing things that aren't right. Without El Centro all these people would be out on the street."
Maria, El Centro Worker:
"When I arrived at El Centro Humanitario, in August 2003, they put me to work. I thank God for giving me this opportunity. At first I was lost in the city. I was putting my life in danger, leaving late from various jobs when I didn't know my way home. I worked with one employer for nearly two months only to find that his checks weren't good. There are still no funds available to cash these checks - which now total nearly $1,000. El Centro is helping me to work with an attorney, and to use the court system for recovery of these wages. This is a great service provided to us by El Centro."
Neha Mahajan, Chinook Fund:
"El Centro has dramatically changed the climate in Denver towards immigrants, workers, people of color, and poor people, and has helped break down the artificial borders that keep us seperated from each other's humanity."
Centro Humanitario Para Los Trabajadores (El Centro) promotes the rights and well-being of day laborers and domestic workers in Colorado through education, economic opportunity, job skills and leadership development, united action and advocacy.
The vision is that Day Laborers and Domestic Workers are agents of change they belong, thrive and contribute in a significant way to their families, communities and the global social change movement.
Centro Humanitario Para Los Trabajadores (El Centro) is Denver's first day laborer organization, organized to defend the human rights of day laborers. In 1998, an injured day laborer was found abandoned on the street with serious brain damage. He had fallen off a roof and his employer, who picked up the worker on a street corner, abandoned him in the dark of night to avoid responsibility for his injuries. Concerned with such worker exploitation and the dangerous working environment that Denver's immigrant day laborers faced as they sought day-to-day work off of street corners, numerous community supporters came together to create a safe indoor place for day laborers. As a result, a run-down warehouse space was rehabilitated by workers themselves and El Centro opened its doors on June 1, 2002.
We work in Denver, Aurora, Thornton, Westminster, and Commerce City. El Centro offers a safe and dignified institution for immigrant workers and their families, providing an alternative to dangerous street-corner labor markets, as well as programs to improve their ability to become self-sufficient and to empower them to take action to protect their rights.
El Centro also provides collective organizing among the workers; as such, training on their rights as workers, and how to advocate for those rights, are an integral part of each program.
We now offer 6 programs to develop a strong and skillful immigrant workforce that creates an economy that works for all:
1. Community Economic Development Program
2. Wellness Program
3. Bienvenidos a Denver (Welcome to Denver-Integration Program)
4. Advocacy & Community Organizing Program
5. Wage Theft Program
6. Entrepreneurship Program
Organization name
Centro de los Trabajadores
other names
Centro de los Trabajadores - Colorado
2002
Tax id (EIN)
03-0412235
Category
Employment
Organization Size
Large Organization
Colorado State Tax Credits
Colorado Enterprise Zone Credit
Address
PO Box 3190Denver County, CO, US
Thornton, CO, US
Westminster, CO, US
Aurora, CO, US
Commerce City, CO, US