The mission of Puentes New Orleans, Inc. is to build assets and create access for the Latino community of the Greater New Orleans area. What does this mean?  It means that we aspire to create an integrated New Orleans region in which the Latino community is a vital, vibrant and active participant that enjoys access to good jobs, quality education, safe streets, affordable housing and economic opportunities.  We believe that with access to growth opportunities, we can create an asset base among the Latino community, both in terms of capital assets and human assets, of people moving into the middle class and out of poverty, and people developing and exercising community leadership skills.  We aspire to create a strong economic base of Latino families who establish roots in the New Orleans area.  To do this, we believe that it is critical that we and our partners do everything possible to make New Orleans and its surrounding areas as multicultural as possible so that Latino and other immigrant families can express and share their cultural heritage as well as learn about the cultural heritage of New Orleans area people.

This mission is rooted in a deep aspiration to restore New Orleans' claim as an international city.  To make this vision a reality, we believe that simply adding international flights and shipping cargo is not enough to make that claim.  Commerce and flights from abroad will not make New Orleans an international city. The culture, which is inherent in its people, in its systems, in its lifestyle, will have to adopt an international flavor.  For New Orleans and its surrounding areas to truly become international, it will be necessary to transform the city and its surrounding regions into a space that is welcoming, accommodating, accessible, and above all, safe for immigrant visitors of all nationalities.  In such a space, a German non-English speaker is able to access public services, if needed, as easily as a Spanish speaking non-English speaker.  Such a space demands that the public infrastructure that supports our lives shifts from its current state of challenged functionality to a state of excellence on all fronts of public service, from law enforcement to health care, and all else inbetween.

Our strategy for executing our vision stems from our mission to build up the assets and access of and for the Latino community of the Greater New Orleans area.  As such, we believe that one key overriding strategy that touches upon all of our programming is to lift up, unite and strengthen the Latino voice.  It is one of Puentes' goals to create a highly active, non-partisan, public leadership Latino voice that is capable of tackling tough issues that affect all of us.  Our advantage is our diverse perspective.  Because we hail from so many different countries and are of so many different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, we have the ability to build strength through this diversity.  It is our belief that the more differing voices working together, the stronger the solution that will be installed.  As we succeed in our work moving forward from here, we aspire to provide this strength, this diverse voice, to the current dialogue dominated by black-white issues.  Our issues in this community are broader than that, and Puentes aspires to ensure that such dialogue expands to be more inclusive of Spanish speakers, Vietnamese speakers, Portugese speakers, Arabic speakers, French speakers, and many more.