ASHEVILLE, N.C. — An immigrant woman living in Asheville has lived two cultures, meaning two different sets of expectations and standards.

What You Need To Know

  • Norma Duran Brown is an immigrant of Venezuela

  • She moved to Haywood County where her husband was a native

  • Brown helps the Latino youth, Latina moms, and all communities get the health resources they need

  • Brown is an everyday hero

With that experience, she’s dedicated the last two decades helping people in western North Carolina who struggle with living two different cultures, like she once did.

Norma Duran Brown is someone we consider an everyday hero for her countless devotion to the Latinx community and even community beyond that.

Brown is very passionate about helping Latinx youth succeed. 

"Mentoring and nurturing our students," Brown said. MANOS is the name of the youth group she formed. "We have an amazing rate of improving grades improving attendance, improving behavior.”

Education is a passion of Brown's. Her first job in the country was as a migrant recruiter for Haywood County Schools.

She wasn’t always in a position to help others. Brown struggled when she came to the United States in 1986. She stayed one year then and felt like the country rejected her.

"It was so, so, so hard," Brown said. So she moved back to Venezuela, but her husband, a Haywood County native, hoped she’d give it another chance. So she did for him.

"Everything suddenly was so beautiful and my husband used to joke about this, 'ya know the mountains were there before'," Brown laughed.

Since then, she’s done so much for the Latinx community in Western North Carolina. Brown has most recently formed UNETE, a nonprofit helping western N.C. communities and people from diverse backgrounds with their health.

UNETE stands for Unmet Needs in Equity: Transformation Empowerment.

"Unete in Spanish is an invitation, an invitation to join the table and that's what we want, to invite everybody," Brown said.

The nonprofit has been a dream of Brown's for decades - based on her experiences as an immigrant, a mother, educator, and somebody with chronic illness.

Brown is using her experience to help people from all backgrounds and to help students grow up to be exactly who they want to be. 

UNETE is still looking for community health workers from Jackson and Transylvania counties to help them in the mission to make sure all needs are met, for everybody.

You can reach the nonprofit at Unete.wnc@gmail.com.