PRINTEduardo Crespi: The reluctant leader
Director of Centro Latino
John Schreiber
Eduardo Crespi is the founder and director of Centro Latino that offers social services to the Latino community.
November 12, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
52 | 18 years in Columbia
Eduardo Crespi does not consider himself a leader. He imagines people with that title have thousands of followers and financial backing and are like the Obamas and Rockefellers of the world.
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Crespi runs Centro Latino, located near Hickman High School that operates with five employees and between 60 and 100 volunteers each semester. “Right now what I have is a lot of enthusiasm from people,” he says. “In order for us to do what we do, we need support.”
Frankly, it costs money to provide the only Spanish-language social services available to the estimated 2,800 Latinos in Columbia. Centro Latino is operating with a $150,000 budget for 2009. Crespi’s initial goal when he founded Centro Latino in 2000 was to empower Latinos by giving them information to be self-sufficient. To do this they provide hospital interpreters, attorney referrals and adult ESL classes. Computers are also available so people can keep in touch with faraway family.
“I’m just someone doing good work in the neighborhood,” says Crespi. “I just do what I like to do; it affects people in a positive way.”
After moving here from Argentina 18 years ago, Crespi sought direction and intellectual stimulation. A skills test suggested a health career track, so he studied nursing at MU. While interning as a public health nurse for the Office of Minority Health, he opened Centro Latino using a small grant from the Office of Minority Health and personal donations.
Centro Latino also provides after-school tutoring for K-12 Latino children. Crespi insists he is not a leader, but instead that he is mentoring new ones in the making. He has now seen former participants come back to serve as tutors, move on to high school and pursue higher education. “They will have the support of our organization and my personal support if that’s what it takes to create new leaders,” Crespi says.
Even now, with his latest endeavor to tackle issues of obesity across all populations in Columbia, he is not a leader. He envisions a Centro Latino community kitchen, that would offer classes on how to prepare healthy food. Crespi is currently going through building permit paperwork to make this idea a reality. The “people’s diner” mixture of grocery store and kitchen would provide fruits and vegetables at affordable prices and help alleviate other health issues such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Crespi is continuing to expand Centro Latino’s influence. Crespi is committed to “finding solutions to the problems” in a nonpartisan, non-confrontational way. Some would consider that leading.
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