COLLEGE STATION, Texas — According to the 2022 U.S Census, Latinos now make up 40.2% of the state's population and our local residents in the Brazos Valley have contributed to this growth in their own ways.
“Back when I got here in 2009 moving from a mainly Hispanic community in El Paso Texas, I was kind of shocked I felt kind of isolated and I struggled at the beginning to get to know other Latinos,” explained Founder and President of Multilingual Academy in College Station, Nelly Forsyth.
The racial makeup of the Brazos Valley has changed immensely over the past decade. This growth came as no surprise to the Hispanic community of entrepreneurs that Forsyth found herself in.
“We knew it we saw it coming," explained Forsyth. "We knew the positive power that we can have in our community and we also knew the responsibility, the responsibility that we have as Latinos to represent ourselves, our people, our countries, and all our positive values."
The responsibility to step up is a decision Nelly had already made by opening multiple business and hiring Latinos, but her Multilingual Academy proves her mission for the future of the community.
“Regardless of our backgrounds if you come from Puerto Rico, if you come from Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, we have in my school, we have all the cultures represented all over the world, especially Latinos. No matter where we come from when there’s unity there will be success,” Forsyth said.
Above all, she has instilled a culture of inclusion in her young students.
Forsyth described her end goal, saying “I know that every generation that graduates from multilingual academy is another group of little humans that are going out there and going to change the world.”
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