“Let’s never leave the dreams of the past buried, let’s keep them blooming and inherit the future.”

Meet Letty! Maria “Letty” Toribio grew up watching her grandfather and mother fight for their communities.

“He would say to me, ‘Someone always came before us and advocated for schools, hospitals, and parks, and we should honor those people. That’s always stuck in my mind,” she said. 

Letty, a strong and vocal advocate inside and outside of COFI/POWER-PAC IL’s Northwest Branch, has been with the organization for nearly 20 years. Originally, she came to COFI training in her daughter’s school for a “morning snack” of coffee and bread.

In fact, she was a bit hesitant and would sit quietly in the back, observing. At the time, not many groups or organizations provided bilingual interpretation, so she never liked sitting in the front in case they didn’t have a Spanish interpreter. But, once she saw and met COFI trainers who spoke Spanish and led sessions, she quickly moved to the front and immediately felt comfortable speaking up.

Since joining, Letty, along with leaders like Felipa, have become one of the founding forces of POWER-PAC IL’s third branch, the Northwest Side. Letty said Felipa was already an experienced leader when she joined, and together they’ve helped grow their branch as well as others. 

“I remember going to Aurora and Elgin and doing training on how they can have their own branch,” she said. 

In addition to helping other communities build parent power, she’s been in COFI and POWER-PAC IL for some of its biggest wins and campaigns, including rewriting and adding restorative justice to the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) student code of conduct, passing recess for all, removing police from CPS and designing a comprehensive Whole School Safety (WSS) Framework, and fighting school fees that prevented students from graduating. 

Through it all, she keeps her grandfather and family’s commitment to advocacy with her. 

“When I see someone struggling, it’s my instinct to help them and do better,” she said. “We cannot abandon our responsibilities as a community.” 

Today, Letty’s focus and much of her branch’s focus has turned to policies and solutions around mental health and healing – especially with the recent launch of the “Shining a Light” report. She and many leaders on the Northwest Side have been trained in peer-to-peer mental health support and have led circles throughout their community to people who cannot afford therapy.

She dreams of expanding healthcare access and continuing her passion for peer-to-peer work to more schools and families because she knows that advocating for children means getting to the root of the problem that their families face – poverty, unhealed trauma, a lack of access to healthcare, and more. 

“I’ve always advocated for kids, but we also have to focus on parents’ healing. Supporting parents supports students.”