California's Proposition 227, or the Unz Initiative, had as its main focus the requirement that English learners be taught only in English, based on the belief that these children could learn English in one year. This led to the dismantling of many bilingual programs in K-12 schools across California. A team of faculty from California State University, Stanislaus (CSU Stanislaus), a public university campus in the Central Valley, was attending the National Two Way California Association of Bilingual Education (CABE) Conference in Monterey in 2006 when a chance meeting occurred in the hotel lobby with teachers and principals from dual language schools from the university's service area. The group commiserated about the hostile environment relative to bilingual education, and agreed on the need to establish what became the Central Valley Dual Language Consortium (CVDLC). The purpose of the Consortium was to create a community of support for dual language programs. The authors decided to write this article describing the journey of the CVDLC as a way to share their experiences with other immigrant and dual language communities in hopes of assisting them in developing their own regional consortia.