Hispanic Children Will Receive a Head Start in Virginia -- Thanks to UTO Grant
Episcopal News Service. December 8, 1993 [93126_Z]
Patrick N. Getlein, Managing Editor of the Virginia Episcopalian, the newspaper of the Diocese of Virginia
Hispanic children in northern Virginia soon will get an opportunity to learn a variety of skills, just as their parents have.
Multi-Family Initiatives Corp. (MFI), a non-profit organization that serves the Hispanic community, has received a $30,000 United Thank Offering (UTO) grant to launch the after-school program, which will serve 30-40 elementary age children who live in or near the 400-unit Presidential Greens housing complex.
"We hope to provide tutoring, recreational programs and mentoring support as well as incorporate the new computer school," said Susan Tuft, president of MFI.
MFI hopes to add the after-school program later this year to the more than one dozen programs offered through its model community center in the heart of the Presidential Greens community. The area that includes the complex is home to between 7,000 and 10,000 Hispanics.
Tuft said that she and her employees have been able to gain the confidence of many of the residents. "We're right here where they live," she said. "Our programs are tailored to their specific needs." Tuft also said that the large population of single mothers in the complex "who are receptive to any help" has boosted community-wide support for the center's programs.
Though only four of the eight staff members of the community center are bilingual, the rest speaking only English, language has not been a problem. "We are often able to communicate without words," Tuft said.
News of the center has spread rapidly through the community's extensive network of families and friends, mostly by word of mouth. "We get 10 to 15 new people in here each day," said Tuft. "In a week, we probably serve between 150 and 200 people."
Between January 1992 and this past August, MFI helped change the profile of Presidential Greens from that of a typical low-income housing project into a model of effective community development. The rate of occupancy has risen from 62 percent to 97 percent; evictions have fallen from 38 percent to less than 1 percent; delinquency is down to 4 percent from 35; and the turnover rate has dropped from 43 percent to 2 percent.
The buildings appear clean, well-painted with trimmed lawns and flower beds along the foundations.
Eucevio Larios, a 23-year-old Salvadoran, has been coming to the center for the past year. Larios is the oldest of four children. His parents still live in El Salvador with one of his brothers and a sister. He speaks little English, but he is learning. "I came to United States to change my life," he said. "Things are better here."
Through community center contacts, Larios was able to find work busing tables in a Washington restaurant. But, according to Tuft and the MFI philosophy, a job is only one step in the total program. Larios also studies English at the center. "It is important," he said. "I want to be able to talk with my friends, and I want to get a better job."
Across the room from Larios is his brother German (pronounced Herman), who spent four months walking from El Salvador to the United States. Unlike Eucevio, however, German neither speaks nor understands English.
According to Myra O'Flaherty, a Nicaraguan who has worked at the center since May and acts as the center's mother hen, the first thing that German must do is to get his immigration status in order. "We'll help with the paper work," she said. "German is almost totally illiterate in Spanish as well as English. Then we'll give him some rudimentary English lessons" to help him be able to function in the city.
According to Tuft, a job is the major focus of much of the work done at the community center. "They need a source of income," she says. "That keeps them in their homes." With that accomplished, Tuft is able to then focus on the core MFI objective: re-establishing community.
O'Flaherty jokes with the regular clients as well as those who are discovering the community center for the first time. "They are my adopted kids," she said.
Martha Carransa, a 46-year-old Salvadoran woman, sits in a chair under a window in the community center waiting room. She speaks abbreviated English and has only been coming to the center for three weeks. She wishes she had started sooner. Through the help of the center's English teacher, Carransa conveyed what the center does for her: "They are helping me to learn how to live."
Carransa takes care of her grandchildren while her five children remain in El Salvador. She takes in sewing work but until recently had no sewing machine. O'Flaherty has found one for her and now she can work as a seamstress out of her home. The center, she said, "is like family."