We were lucky to catch up with Angel Cervantes recently and have shared our conversation below.

Angel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My parents’ example profoundly influenced my decision to create the Cervantes Fund for Social Justice. I grew up hearing stories of my father’s days as a farm worker and his impoverished youth. My mother overcame the challenges of contracting Polio at a very young age.

My father often spoke about the fact his parents would often contract him to work with neighboring families in exchange for FOOD to feed him. In his own words, he would “sleep under a tree” and worked for food and this profoundly influenced his belief that if we are blessed with comfort, success, and financial stability, we are obligated to lend a hand to those who are still working to attain those blessings.

My mother taught me through her example. Her condition excluded her from many activities and yet she lived her life with dignity, humility, positivity, and thankfulness. She never allowed her handicap to dim her positive nature and she taught me that each of us is born with visible and invisible challenges and we must strive each day to be “kind to each other” and lend a hand when we can.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

In 2003, my father, older brother, and I founded The Cervantes Fund for Social Justice as a way for us to give back to our community. The original idea was to incorporate and create a non profit as a vehicle for our family to make donations and to raise funds from our large family to help those in need.

Within 2 years, we had expanded to include friends and co workers who also shared our dream to help students and families that had financial need.

Our dream was to create a FUND that would allow us to create scholarships and fund programs which would assist deserving, intelligent students to achieve their academic goals in spite of their poverty.

We started with “backyard boogies” to raise funds and we have grown in the last 20 years to attract multiple local business sponsors which allows us to organize large scale fundraising events.

I’m most proud of the fact that our friends,family,co workers have joined us on this journey and we can now fund scholarships that follow students from 5th grade to 12th grade. We fund these scholarships at 2 local elementary schools and we can also give these students birthday gifts every year as well as Christmas presents for their whole family- including a $1,000 holiday bonus check for their parents.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest things that I have had to “unlearn” is the idea that asking for help is dishonorable and/or a sign of weakness. For a long time I struggled with the embarrassment of “asking people for donations”.

I was very surprised to find that if I just asked people for donations or assistance with my cause that they were more than willing to assist. They would tell me, “I wish you would have asked earlier!!”

I have learned that most people want to do something “GOOD” and it makes them feel fulfilled when they can help someone else.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Community based non profits don’t grow overnight… Most of us don’t have millionaire donors so it can take MANY years to see some form of moderate success. It took us over a DECADE to jump from events in my backyard to events sponsored by some of the most successful and popular businesses in my community.

Many times there was a voice in my head that said, “What are you doing? Who do you think you are to think you can raise thousands of dollars for kids and families you don’t even know?” Not to mention the GUILT I feel constantly knowing that if I just did a bit more I could also help more.

Leaders have to be resilient…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cervantesfund.com
• Instagram: cervantes_fund