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More than 150 people attended the event, which featured a live and silent auction, as well as a multi-course meal with wine pairings and live tango dancers.  

The event raised nearly $50,000 to support Mi Casa's mission of economic success for Latino families - more than any other event in Mi Casa's history!   

Chef Hosea Rosenberg of Boulder, winner of Bravo TV's Season Five Top Chef, created the courses, and Alamos Winery offered the complementary libations.  

Joanne Davidson of The Denver Post did a great write-up about the event, click here to read it.  

We are so grateful to our many friends who bought tickets, bid on silent and live auction items, or made a donation to Mi Casa during the live ask at the event. We could not pull off such a successful event without you!  

Photos top to bottom: Tango dancers set the mood; Chef Hosea Rosenberg; Christine Marquez-Hudson aids the live auction; remarks by Pat Miller, The Gabby Gourmet.  

Click here to view more photos from the event. 

Stay tuned for details for the 2013 Taste & Tango event!   

When there are three schools operating on a single campus, as with Lake Middle School in Northwest Denver, building a sense of community can be a challenge. 

But creating a shared community at Lake is a priority for the administrations, as well as for Mi Casa, which runs afterschool programs for all students on the Lake Campus. 

Recently, staff from Mi Casa's Youth & Family programs, as well as leaders from the Lake schools, traveled to Texas for a Community Learning Exchange event to create a vision for the shared Lake Campus. 

Photo:  Mi Casa's Cody Buchanan (far right) and Karen Fox Elwell attended the event, along with Ryan Kockler, Principal of West Denver Prep - Lake Campus (second from right), and Ronaldo Ortiz, Assistant Principal of Lake International School (far left).  

Community Learning Exchanges bring people together to share actions, practices, ideas and outcomes to advance innovations in education and youth development. 

Lake is a turnaround school, home to a unique model including a charter school co-located with two public schools.  As an agency that serves students from each of the three schools, Mi Casa is in a unique position to drive the creation of a Shared Campus at Lake.   

At the event in Texas, Mi Casa staff worked with leaders from Lake schools to create a detailed vision of community for the children and families at Lake and an action plan to make it happen. 

Once back in Denver, Mi Casa staff and school leaders held the first of regularly scheduled Shared Campus meetings.  The group is committed to collaborating to meet the needs of Lake families and supporting high-quality educational, extracurricular, and wraparound support services.  

To read more about Community Learning Exchanges and efforts to create a Shared Campus at Lake, click here.  

Mi Casa thanks The Denver Foundation for its ongoing support of our mission and its unwavering commitment to improving life in communities across Metro Denver.

The Denver Foundation recently awarded an operating grant for Mi Casa to support Career, Business, and Youth & Family Development programs. Mi Casa provides a practical pathway for Latino families to achieve economic success by facilitating new educational, professional and entrepreneurial opportunities.   

One person who benefits from The Denver Foundation's support of Mi Casa's afterschool enrichment programs is Deon, an eighth grader at Lake International School. Deon loves coming to Mi Casa after school to create video games and build robots that he programs to move around using a computer.  

"After school Deon can express himself, play, learn, and indulge his wild imagination in a safe place," says Sheryl, Deon's mom. "At Mi Casa Deon has a community and a voice, and I see him take a great sense of pride in that." 

Deon's passion is computers, and the programming instruction he gets after school at Mi Casa has opened new doors for him. Deon looks forward to combining his passion for airplanes and computers into a career as an aviation engineer. He knows he needs to focus on math to get there, so he spends time after school in Mi Casa's Homework Zone studying up on the tough concepts.  

Thanks to the support of The Denver Foundation, Mi Casa served more than 500 children like Deon in afterschool programs during the 2010-2011 school year.  

The Denver Foundation is a community foundation dedicated to improving life in Metro Denver through inspiring people and mobilizing resources to strengthen the community. Community foundations are endowments - permanent pools of money contributed by donors to benefit a specific geographic area. In 2011, The Denver Foundation awarded $47 million to nonprofit organizations.  

Learn more at www.DenverFoundation.org 

Mi Casa offers seminars for people with a business idea or those curious about what it takes to succeed in business. Considering a Business? seminars are offered in English and Spanish. You'll also learn more about entrepreneurial training offered by Mi Casa.  

Considering a Business? in Spanish - 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 14 

Call Claudia for more information at 303-539-5606.   

Free Legal Information

Legal Night is the third Tuesday of every month and an opportunity to get free legal information from volunteer attorneys specializing in a variety of legal fields.    

The next Legal Night is Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 5:30 p.m. 

Call 303-573-1302 for more information.    

Mi Casa also organizes a Business Legal Night for entrepreneurs to get legal information affecting their business operations.  

Call 303-539-5606 for more information. 

Free Bilingual Computer Classes

ESL Registration - Thursday, March 8

Mi Casa offers low-cost English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at the Mi Casa Neighborhood Center at Lake Middle School (1820 Lowell Blvd.).  

The 6-week course costs just $20 and is led by professional language instructors.  

REGISTRATION FOR ESL CLASSES:  

Thursday, March 8, at 6 p.m.  

Call 303-571-1881 for more information.