Yolo López Pérez

I started working at the Center for Healing and Hope as a patient advocate. I helped people who didn’t have affordable health insurance and I really enjoyed working with them.

Now I’m the director of development. One of my goals for the Center is to gather more sustaining partners – people who want to continually support us so we can continue improving and getting better at what we do.

I graduated from Goshen College in 2012 and grew up in Elkhart. After graduation, I moved abroad to do service in Costa Rica for three years. After that, I moved to Mexico and also Panama to continue serving. I moved back to Goshen in 2017 and knew I wanted to continue being part of a job that helped make the community a desirable and unique place to live.

At the Center for Healing and Hope, we work on providing medical and advocacy services in a Christ-like manner to meet people’s needs in our community. The Center is run entirely by volunteers, and we have some Goshen College students helping us! It’s an affordable place for health care and community partners to work on physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. I work on finding people who are passionate about our community and who want to help support us financially and with other gifts and talents.

Part of my job is creating events that bring people together. Our Latino Business Expo was an especially successful one! We partnered with the Chamber and other institutions with the goal of helping to support the local Latino entrepreneurs in their integration in the community. It brought entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and families together.

As a broadcasting major I really miss reporting news, so I try to do as much as a I can on the side, specifically with local Latino news. So I’m also a local reporter who tries to keep community members informed about the outstanding people around them.

I strive to win and succeed when I’m passionate about something, and the success of Goshen is one of those things. I want Goshen to stand out and be a place where people want to move to, and I’m ready to help and come up with innovative ideas that will help Goshen families and the community excel. I have to thank my parents and my future husband who have supported me and my goals both as an individual and as a professional.

Moving back to Goshen from my service in Central America was a hard decision. However, I came back because I know how welcoming the city is. It’s evident that people work together here and I thought, “I want to help contribute to the amazing work that our leaders are doing here and our businesses.”