Founded in 2004, Voto Latino works to promote an enfranchised America by leveraging celebrity voices, the latest technology and youth themselves to promote positive change. Voto Latino seeks to empower our community. In 2006, Voto Latino launched the first national sms voter registration and GOTV project with Mobile Voter. Our joint community efforts brought us recognition.Voto Latino's Public Service Announcements won award and nominations. Recently, Co-Founder Rosario Dawson received the 2007 Hispanic Heritage Award for Vision. To see our PSAs take a look at our media section.

Voto Latino is a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 2004 by actress Rosario Dawson and spearheaded by Executive Director Maria-Teresa Kumar. Voto Latinos vision is to increase American Latino youth civic participation by both increasing voter turnout and political involvement among this group. Voto Latinos work ranges from on the ground voter registration to engaging with youth through pop culture and multimedia awareness campaigns.

In 2006 Voto Latino launched the Text2Represent campaign the first national campaign of its kind using SMS cell phone texting technology that facilitated voter registration by cell phone text reminders. During the 2008 election, Voto Latino continued the text messaging campaign to increase Latino voter participation in key battleground states. We further strengthen the Get Out the Vote efforts by creating the La Pasion de la Decision PSA series (which was spotlighted on CNN and featured celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Wilmer Valderrama, Jane Fonda, Craig Newmark and Perez Hilton. It also generated more than 10 million online views and 100 million television impressions). In addition, we developed an award winning program with SíTV, Crash The Parties, that sent two young aspiring journalists to report at the Republican and Democratic conventions. Both of these programs were honored with Webby Official Honoree recognitions.

Voto Latino also enlisted an army of volunteers and formed an Artist Coalition, made up of over 35+ celebrities, to encourage civic engagement that included Wilmer Valderrama, Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria, Pitbull, Fat Joe, Sofia Vergara, Jennifer Lopez and many more. Our coalition led voters to the polls in Nevada, held voter registration concerts in Virginia, Florida and Texas, and walked precincts in Colorado and Texas. Volunteers called thousands of voters and documented their experiences at the polls through our YouTube partnership Video Your Vote. We crisscrossed the country, sharing our findings at the Tides Momentum Conference, spoke on panels such as Harvards Race & Ethnicity with David Gergen and Alan Dershowitz, and helped decipher the Latino vote for MSNBCs Decision 08 Coverage, NPR, BBC and CNNs AC360.

In the five battle ground states (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Texas) where Voto Latino enjoyed a strong presence, Latino voter participation was at least 5 points higher than the national average. Our programs, public service announcements and viral videos reached over 100 million individuals. During the 2008 presidential election campaign between the tickets Barack Obama-Joe Biden and John McCain-Sarah Palin, Voto Latino came closer to achieving its mission of engaging a new generation of Americans in civic participation through award winning programs, becoming the go to media expert on the Latino vote and implementing sophisticated on the ground initiatives. But our work does not stop at activating the fastest growing segment to the polls and we need you to flex your political muscle.