Thank you for joining me in donating to support my neighbors living on the margins here in Northern Virginia.

Please share this link with your friends and colleagues to help us make our goal of $5,000.

Schuler Solutions will match the first $1,500 raised here.

Why do I support TWU?
These are my grandparents, Lorenzo Chunga and his wife Maria. Grandpa immigrated from Paita in the north of Peru, and Grandma, whose maiden name was Segarra, came from Lares, in the central mountain region of Puerto Rico. They were the center of my extended family growing up. My mother was their sixth of seven children (seventh of eight if you include the brother born before her who died when he was 3). All our family holidays were spent with them at their home in Brooklyn, NY, surrounded by my many cousins, eating arroz con pollo, empanadas, pasteles, ceviche, and the various soups and guisados my grandmother made.

TWU is largely staffed and led by members of the native Spanish speaking immigrant community and their first-generation children here in NOVA, serving and advocating for, not only marginalized Latino American communities here in NOVA, but all people living precariously on the margins in inadequate housing, living subject to the whims of landlords and developers. I drive by their headquarters and through this community every day. They are my neighbors. When I see these neighbors in my community, I see my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother. . . and aunts and uncles and cousins. I remember the house my barely educated grandfather owned, an unreachable dream for my neighbors today.