Enrique Flores Started East Side Heroes

msmith@scu.edu (Martha Smith) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:34:18 PST

At age 23 (year 2003), Enrique S. Flores Founded the East Side Heroes' Vision. This vision is to improve the quality of life of all underprivileged youth and families, via life-long team-mentorship, assisting our mentees in the development of 35 core-leadership-strengths, and as the 1st Community Based Organization in the San Francisco Bay Area to successfully provide academic scholarships to qualified 8th grade students who have been admitted into a private college prep high school of their choice, but who's family simply can not afford the tuition.

Remarkably, East Side Heroes (as a volunteer-run organization) has raised over $125,000 dollars in the past 4 years. Enrique acknowledges that this success can only be attributed to the hundreds of community volunteers, generous donors, and friends who share this same vision of making a quality education and resources available and attainable to all youth and their families. Enrique continues to serve and volunteer his time, faithfully over the past 5 years, as the Executive Director for East Side Heroes.

Enrique S. Flores is a product of the Alum Rock School district and grew up in East San Jose's "Story & King Neighborhood". Enrique S. Flores comes from a working-class/ low-income family. Both Enrique's parents are immigrants, whom arrived to this country in hopes of providing a better future for their children. With the help of many caring Jesuit Priests (aka: The Society of Jesus), Enrique was educated at Bellarmine College Preparatory and earned both a Bachelors Degree and Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University. Enrique S. Flores is the author of his autobiographical intervention workbook entitled: From East Side San Jose, to Santa Clara University and Back. Enrique is currently working on a second short-story book, soon to be released.

MySpace nun hasn't forgotten to have fun

msmith@scu.edu (Martha Smith) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:19:37 PST

The Mercury News wrote this article about Sister Rebecca Shinas, a graduate of the Pastoral Ministries program. I love this quote! "Most nuns are really mean," said Mark Graham, 48, a Cisco software engineer who play guitar with Sister Rebecca and posts her concerts on YouTube. "She's the exact opposite of that. how many times have you seen a nun play electric guitar?"

Sister Rebecca has four CDs for sale on cdbaby.com and iTunes. Her MySapce page is at www.myspace.com/justbebecky

Article written by Lisa Fernandez

Alumni in the News

Enrique Flores Started East Side Heroes

MySpace nun hasn't forgotten to have fun