The purpose of this qualitative case study utilizing ethnographic methods was to understand how family members’ participation in Digital Home, a community-based technology program in an urban mid-sized Midwestern city, built on and fostered Latino immigrant families’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) in order to increase their abilities to navigate their children’s schooling experiences. Two major questions guide this study: 1) How do family members involved in this community-based program perceive family involvement in their children’s education and how do they believe schools define parental involvement? 2) How does participating in this community-based program affect immigrant Latino families’ various forms of capital? In order to answer these questions, I conducted semi-structured interviews with six adult program participants, five children, and seven program volunteers, including the program’s founder and coordinator. I also engaged in participant observation and analyzed various public and program documents. Study findings show that the program “methodology” built on and leveraged the cultural characteristics of Latino families and familial, linguistic, and navigational capital supported and extended families’ educational and personal aspirations. Activating community cultural wealth, the relationships and knowledge fostered within the program supported families’ resistant capital, evidenced by parents’ abilities to advocate for their children within their schools. The program’s approaches can serve as a model for educational leaders to enact culturally responsive leadership and family engagement practices. While the empowerment experienced by Digital Home families did not appear to spread widely within districts’ schools, the program did expand the way parents could participate in their children’s schooling.
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