Throughout last year, Nuestro Mundo Inc. (NMI) has steadfastly executed its mission to develop bilingualism and biliteracy in our community and to promote intercultural competency and equity for students and their families.

NMI works directly with Nuestro Mundo Community School (NMCS), a Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) public charter school, to achieve academic success of students—particularly, those students who have been historically underserved in our district—through an innovative dual language immersion (DLI) curriculum and learning models that have a deep commitment to parent and community engagement. While NMCS was founded as a DLI school to more effectively set Latinx students up for social mobility and academic success, the NMCS model enhances the educational experience of all of its students.

In 2017, NMI established an advocacy goal for NMCS: “Through securing permanent facilities for a Spanish DLI elementary school as an innovative and independent program within MMSD, Nuestro Mundo will continue to unite and lead our community as a force for social change, equity and educational excellence.” In light of this advocacy goal, NMI is embarking on its third 5-year renewal of its charter with MMSD that will allow NMCS to continue to serve MMSD as an incubator for innovative practices embracing equity, cultural responsiveness, and biliteracy.

As Madison’s pioneer DLI program, NMI hopes to “open source” our best strategies to benefit other DLI students and their families in the district. This year, NMI will formally work to promote DLI throughout the district and share its “lessons- learned” in its 14 years of progress. NMI will engage a broad array of community stakeholders in meaningful and open discussion on how we—as an organization and community members—can best support students’ success in and beyond elementary school.

The heart of the Nuestro Mundo mission is to promote a pluralist and inclusive community. NMI is actively working to become more culturally responsive among its board of directors and throughout the Nuestro Mundo community.