For Joel Newton, the mission of nonprofit Edgewater Collective is simple: “To really connect the community needs with the community assets.”
Newton, one of the nonprofit's board members, says the organization has served between 5,000 and 7,500 people since it was founded over a decade ago.
It has since grown into a trusted space for Latino families across Jefferson County, helping to connect the community with critical resources. But as new challenges mount, the organization is having to adapt to continue its work.
Newton says one of the biggest challenges is funding — especially in the last year and a half.
"Larger nonprofits that receive federal funding lost that funding, and so they were entering the grant pool just the same as small nonprofits like us," he said.
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In June 2025, the nonprofit announced it lost two critical grants.
With less money, the organization had to switch from paid employees to an exclusively volunteer-run organization.
"The best thing for us to do was to become agile and really become all volunteer, so that we wouldn't have to work hard to get funding we wouldn't receive, but that we could also meet the needs of our community," he said.
For Newton, losing funding isn't all bad.
“Especially now that we don’t receive any of the funding, we are not held back in really speaking the truth about the value of our immigrants to this community,” Newton said.
For volunteers like Azucena Rubio, the program has become a lifeline.
“My son attended the summer program for a couple years," she said. "It was helpful for me, because I work all year long. He was more interactive, like, outdoors and there was learning.”
During the pandemic, Edgewater Collective shifted its focus, responding directly to urgent needs in the Latino community.
“One of the things we did in the beginning of the pandemic was really work on connecting food from our local restaurants that were struggling to people that were struggling,” Newton said.
That work helped open the door to new opportunities, including Latina-led worker cooperative businesses.
“Our immigrant neighbors care deeply about the American dream, want that for their families, and are working hard to meet that goal,” Newton said.
For Rubio, that built-up trust means knowing help is always within reach.
“If I am in need, I can come to them, and they can give me the resources where I can get help,” she said.
Despite the challenges Edgewater Collective has faced, they say they will continue to move forward with the work they’ve been doing now for the past 13 years — and new changes could be on the horizon.
"We used to rent a space in Edgewater," he said. "We no longer do that, because we're volunteer-led, but we kind of move our meetings around to where community members are at."
Despite that, the nonprofit is eyeing the former Molholm Elementary School site as their next home.
“It's still a dream of our community to create a community center with that surrounding neighborhood, but we're just waiting on the school district for them to decide what to do with that space,” Newton said.
Edgewater Collective is also looking to change its name in the coming months.
“As we kind of reached out to our Latino communities in JeffCo, we began to realize that our name, Edgewater Collective, was kind of limiting," Newton said. "Our mission now is really to work with Latino communities across the county."
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