Hi there, my name is Enzo, and I am the founder of Unidos Por El Idioma. Although I was born and raised in the U.S, my entire extended family lives in Brazil. Over the years, I have gone on several trips to Brazil to visit family. On each of these trips, I practiced my Portuguese, though my cousins were always keen to practice their English with me. Each year I went back, my cousins would get a little better, learning a new word or two, and I found myself to really enjoy teaching English to them, to the point that it became a small family tradition. Learning Portuguese with my parents helped me to easily learn Spanish as well. My Spanish developed over time as I progressed through Spanish at school, but with both Portuguese and Spanish, there was always something missing: practice. I could memorize verb conjugations, practice pronunciation, roll my “rs” as many times as possible, but I never truly got that on the spot practice that would bring me to the next level. My classmates, who also spoke Spanish at home or in previous immersion schools, felt the same way.

Every trip to Brazil brings new memories, time with family, and loads of great food. Every time I go, I visit both of my grandparents, who live a 2 hour drive apart from each other. Though my trips to Brazil were always positive ones, this car ride always provided a sad memory, as we passed through several under-developed neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were different from anything I’d see in the U.S. They were much larger, and much more common. Each time I passed by these neighborhoods, I would always think “maybe one day I can help, but right now, there’s nothing I can do about it.” That’s where I was wrong. One day, while doing research for a school project, I came upon the following fact: countries with higher percentages of English speakers tend to have better economies. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but the gist of it suggests that learning English can help, in some way, with economic growth. My mind immediately jumped back to my trips to Brazil. I did have a way to help simply because I spoke English, and I had the ability to translate it to Spanish or Portuguese as I had already been doing while teaching my family English. That’s when I started Unidos Por El Idioma. It became a way for me to give back to my community and practice my Spanish at the same time.