BostonCAN has started to build its capacity to reach the Latino community in the Jamaica Plain area. We now have several fluent Spanish speakers who are willing to translate informally at meetings or for small written documents, but we do not yet have any fluent staff positions or consultants. This limits our ability to answer questions that Spanish speakers pose or to make presentations to Latino venues. Given that a large section of JP is as much as 50% Latino, this lack of capacity is a glaring weakness in our ability to achieve the carbon reductions and community empowerment that is our goal. We are applying for funds for bi-cultural, bilingual staff: 40 hours/month for 6 months. Our expectation is that this funding will allow an organizer to engage a core of Latino participants in Low Carbon Living, barnraisings, and Green Block meetings. We are also asking for funding so we can increase our role as a network hub, linking neighborhood-based organizations with sustainability missions throughout Boston and beyond. We have begun this work with quarterly meetings starting in Dec. 2010 and March 2011. We plan for one this summer and seasonally throughout the year. We anticipate that this effort will take about 120 hours over 12 months. We are also building in an additional 40 hours for improvements in planning, documenting, and evaluating our work, areas that need to be better routinized so that they take less time eventually. We anticipate that the networking campaign will result in the formalization of one or more structures for increased collaboration and political clout, as well as streamlined operating procedures for BostonCAN.