Calexico native wins prestigious prize to study credit dependency among recent immigrants

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IMPERIAL VALLEY, Calif. – Calexico native and former Imperial Valley College student Luis Flores has been awarded the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate prize to pursue a hands-on solution to educating new immigrants to the U.S. about credit dependency. The $25,000 Stronach award will fund Flores’s “El Valle y la Recesion” project, a visual documentary that will focus on illustrating the difficulties Imperial Valley residents, mainly recent immigrants, struggle with when faced with credit and mortgage decisions. “Rather than blaming immigrants for borrowing too much [money], or for not being educated enough, I want to suggest that there were larger forces compelling immigrants to live a life of credit dependency,” said Flores.  “This project wants to show that the typical explanations of the recession in the region are limited, because they do not look at the history of economic policies in both the Mexicali and Imperial valleys since the 1980s.”

The ultimate result of “El Valle y la Recesion” is to develop an educational and service website, and possibly a bricks-and-mortar service, that will aid border consumers in credit decisions, something that does not exist at this time. Flores, 22, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with undergraduate degrees in political economy and history, will return to Calexico in August to start his project, which he envisions as a collaboration with IVC, San Diego State University Imperial Valley campus, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California in Mexicali, and the University of Texas El Paso’s student journalism website Borderzine.com.

Former MLB player gives back to Imperial Valley

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IMPERIAL, Calif.- After playing 24 years of professional baseball for nine different teams and 13 major organizations and being a 2008 World Series champion for the Philadelphia Phillies, Imperial Valley native Rudy Seanez returned to his home to help inspire young and old alike. “I’ve always lived here. This is home. I grew up in Brawley. My family is here, so that was factor number one,” said Seanez in an interview at his Seanez Sports Academy.

Stringing music for young people in the Imperial Valley

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IMPERIAL, Calif. – “Strings in general, even at schools, aren’t a big thing but we kinda need it if we’re going to have any future in the orchestral music,” said Dr. Matthew Busse, instructor for Beginning Strings Orchestra and Southwest High School Orchestra teacher. Two years ago Busse started an orchestra program at Corfman Middle School in El Centro, but recently moving from El Centro to Imperial, he said his wife suggested that he start the program for orchestra lessons in Imperial, after she saw flyers about guitar lessons and other lessons that the City of Imperial has to offer. Busse thought about it and decided to expand it to see what happens. So far, the turnout of students is fairly small with two students from Ballington Academy and a few from Imperial, but  Busse wants to invite anyone who hasn’t had any kind of experience in orchestral music and students who don’t have the opportunity to perform in their schools orchestra to join the program.