Announcing Verano Bilingue 2023 | Bilingual Summer 2023 Powered by Comcast Military

Announcing Verano Bilingue 2023 | Bilingual Summer 2023
Powered by Comcast Military

Professional Development and Networking Opportunities for Bilingual
Hispanic/Latino/a/x Military Spouses.

Blue Star Careers is proud and honored to continue to support our diverse communities via research, purposeful programming, and opportunities that add a sense of community for our Hispanic/Latino/a/x community in the workplace.

Since 2021, the Blue Star Careers Program has been delivering solutions to the multiple employment challenges our Hispanic population faces in today’s diverse and competitive workforce market. Based on the research findings from our aMFLS and Blue Star Families Campaign for Inclusion.

From this research, we learned that;

• Female Hispanic/Latina military spouses have the worst earning outcomes of all military spouse groups by race/ethnicity. They earn 66% ($21,200) less than the U.S. median earnings.
• 27% of military spouse respondents of color are unemployed but need or want paid employment and have actively sought work within the past four weeks.
• Active-duty spouses of color, like their civilian counterparts, experience poorer employment outcomes associated with their gender and race/ethnicity, but these employment challenges are exacerbated by their military affiliation.
• The majority of active-duty family respondents (72%) report their financial situation as “doing okay” or “living comfortably.” However, this is less than the proportion of the U.S. population (78%) reporting a similar financial situation. This disparity is even greater for active-duty family respondents of color (67%).

To support our diverse, bilingual community, Verano Bilingue was created — a virtual summer program that offers the tools and resources to build a network and access employment opportunities while using bilingual skills to meet the needs of the current workforce.

Through Verano Bilingue, bilingual Hispanic/Latino/a/x military spouses are empowered to access personal development tools that fuel their success — all while spotlighting employers who are looking for diverse talent with bilingual skills. Since the beginning of the program, our bilingual pipeline has grown from 126 to over 1,000 members in two years. In 2022, we conducted more than 15 workshops and webinars over the summer. And over the course of the year, in collaboration with Grow with Google, we have supported monthly webinars in Spanish to expand Google tools and skills.