Personal Biography:

Marvin Andrade is the Civic Education and Participation Director at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) in Los Angeles. A non-profit community based organization that serves the Central American and Latino community through legal services, advocacy, education, and civic participation programs. His work includes public policy and advocacy, leadership development, community involvement and community technology.

In 1980, at the age of 11, Mr. Andrade and his family migrated to the Unites States from El Salvador seeking refuge from the civil war that devastated that country and the Central American region at the time.

His experiences as an ESL student, underserved youth, and undocumented immigrant contributed to shape his commitment towards the empowerment of the immigrant community in the United States.

In 1998 he graduated from the University of Southern California with undergraduate degrees in Political Science and International Relations.

He joined CARECEN in 1999 and began working with public officials, coalitions and immigrant rights advocacy groups on policy and legislation aimed at reforming our current immigration laws to secure family reunification, protection of refugees, fair treatment of immigrant workers, and permanent legal residence for undocumented immigrants.

Mr. Andrade's mission is to educate, empower and encourage the civic participation of the Central American and Latino community in the political process at the local, state and national levels.

He currently resides in the community of Avocado Heights, in Southern California with his wife, Silvia.

Goals:

Technology is the way of the future. Like it or not, we all must learn to use technology for everyday use. A section of our society is being marginalized when it comes to technology access. The digital divide has become a digital apartheid between the ones that can afford access to technology and those who can't, leaving a significant portion of our society in the shadows of illiteracy to the potential uses of technology.

It is wonderful to see the faces of community members seeing computers not as beasts to be tamed but as mediums of communication and windows of hope and empowerment. It is happening in our underserved communities but we need more of it. My goals for the fellowship: Become as knowledgeable as possible on community technology, communications, and technology policy as means of community empowerment and self-reliance. Knowing first hand the need of technology access in our communities I want to learn to advocate and engage other community leaders, business, foundations, policy makers and others on investing in community technology programs.