Sent On Mission
Words from Ellie Hidalgo C’87 | Newman President
I have many, many fond memories of my involvement with the Penn Newman Center from 1983-1987. I volunteered at a juvenile prison with a group of Penn volunteers and I helped a young man prepare for and receive his GED (high school equivalency exam). A group of us served at a soup kitchen in the Kensington area of Philadelphia (white Irish poor and working class). I served as President of the Newman Council my senior year in college, and I remember my friends from Penn Newman fondly.
My time at Penn Newman had a great influence on me and my formation as an adult Catholic. I worked as a staff writer for The Tidings Catholic Newspaper in Los Angeles for nine years. I covered the restorative justice beat, immigration beat, healthcare, the role of women in the church, etc. Later on I studied for a Master's degree in Pastoral Theology and the Jesuit Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I have now been working for more than 10 years at Dolores Mission Church and School, an immigrant community in Boyle Heights - East Los Angeles. Most families come from Mexico and Central America. Dolores Mission is the parish that started Homeboy Industries, now the largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program in the world. You may have heard of Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle who wrote the NY Times bestselling Tattoos on the Heart and also Barking to the Choir. I serve as the Pastoral Associate of Dolores Mission and am part of the leadership team. We have more than 34 high school and college student groups visiting us throughtout the year for alternative breaks. These have included St. Joseph U. in Philly, Georgetown, U. of VA and many more. Penn students would be welcome if you ever wanted visit Dolores Mission and learn about how a poor community put its faith into action and transformed neighborhood violence by courageously developing restorative justice practices and outreach to gang members as well as victim/survivors of crime.
Ellie Hidalgo is dedicated to Boyle Heights, a Latino immigrant community just east of downtown Los Angeles, California, where she lives and works. Ellie graduated with a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, has a master’s in pastoral theology from Loyola Marymount University, and is a certified parenting instructor. She was a writer for The Tidings and worked at WXPN-FM public radio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For the past seven years, she has focused on teaching parenting classes in Spanish in her community. Ellie believes that working with parents to build and sustain a connection with one another and with their children is a key element in breaking the cycle of addiction and of domestic and gang violence in her neighborhood.
Ellie is a godmother to six children and was the foster parent to two young relatives during a time of crisis. She now directs the parent education program at Dolores Mission and for Promise Neighborhoods–Boyle Heights as part of a national initiative to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York. Among her responsibilities at Dolores Mission, Ellie co-facilitates a support group for survivors of violence, mostly family members who have lost a loved one to gang violence. At Dolores Mission, her programs include a support group for parents with adolescent or adult children who are in prison, and she initiates opportunities to use the principles of restorative justice between the two groups.