This paper describes a community service learning (CSL) project that helped sixteen Latino/a teacher trainees in the areas of caring, social justice, bias reduction, teaching experience, personal growth, joy, and collaboration. The project was significant because the participants and the children they tutored were all Latinos who had shared similar experiences, unlike the dissimilar backgrounds between most college trainee students and the children they tutor. Participants engaged in tutoring, planting native flora, and a literacy methods course for three weeks in a South Texas neighborhood, reputably the most economically disadvantaged neighborhood for its size in the USA.