HDC Newsletter Winter 2004
Aquí está lo que pasa con nosotros
In this issue
 FARMWORKER CHILDREN
DOL HONORS HDC
NEW SEASONS BENEFIT AND BIKE WINNER
MEET RESIDENT CAROLINA GUITERREZ
Farmworker children go to science summer camp!!!
Kids learn about the environment, water quality, animal habitat and the life cycle of salmon
Hillsboro -- Farmworker children in the Forest Grove, Cornelius and Hillsboro areas got a chance to go to summer day camp in August thanks to cooperative efforts by the Housing Development Corporation of Northwest Oregon (HDC), and local public and private non-profit agencies.
The 48 children participating in the Hydromania! Science Camp and the Audubon Society camps live in affordable family housing owned and operated by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC), headquartered in Hillsboro. The majority of farmworker children in HDC housing come from larger families which typically live on less than $25,000 per year and can't afford most summer programs.
HDC coordinated with the Oregon Health Careers Center to offer Hydromania! which featured two weeks of classes and field trips. Help came from the Tualatin River Watershed Council, Tualatin Riverkeepers, Trout Unlimited and Clean Water Services. The I Have a Dream program at the Forest Grove School District provided three AmeriCorps volunteers to assist during the camp.
The Audubon Society Camp was held both in Hillsboro area parks and at HDC apartment complexes. The camps included trips to Jackson Bottom and Fernhill Wetlands, the Oregon Coast, the Audubon Society facility on Cornell Road and hikes in Forest Park. Students studied stream life, identified animals, built bird houses and enjoyed a BBQ for the children's families hosted by the Audubon Society.
Hydromania and the Audubon Society camps were the only camping experience of the summer for most of the 4-6th graders as well as their first chance to learn about the life cycle of salmon, explore stream habitat and visit local wetlands and water treatment facilities. The highlight of Hydromania was a field trip to Hagg Lake, where campers went canoeing and fishing, many for the first time.
Paola Peirano, HDC's resident services coordinator, said: "The kids had fun learning about animal habitat, watershed, fish survival and how we affect water quality by polluting or taking care of the environment. It was great working with our enthusiastic colleagues who selflessly pulled together to make this happen for the kids."
"Camps with academic components are especially important for farmworker children in order to help them gain skills leading to school success," Linda Netheron, co-executive director, HDC, said. "Middle school is a time when this enrichment becomes critical, since many farmworker parents lack English and other basic skills sufficient to help children with homework."
"Everyone is a watershed steward," April Olbrich, a camp supporter and Coordinator of the Tualatin River Watershed Council, said: "We were excited about partnering with HDC. Hydromania! Campers learned and can now teach their families and friends how we all impact our rivers and streams, and what each one of us can do to improve watershed health."
Funding for the Hydromania! Summer Science Camp came from the Herbert Templeton Foundation, Clean Water Services, Waltz Sheridan Crawford Insurance, and other community donors who helped with costs. Money for the Audubon Society camp came through the Society and their funders with the HDC contributing staff time. Programming was provided by local public and private non-profit agencies that share a concern for children, environ- mental education, animal and fish habitat and water quality.
The HDC has been helping farmworkers and their families since 1981 by developing and managing affordable housing and services to increase economic independence and family stability. Summer academic enrichment programs for farmworker children are among the newest programs HDC offers.
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DOL Honors HDC
The Housing Development Corporation received a prestigious award from the US department of Labor recently for a workplace training program serving adult farmworkers. The award went to just 16 of 300 HDC agencies nationwide. An organization in California was the only other Western HDC that was honored.
Dori Rutherford, an administrator with DOL in Washington, DC said: "HDC is clearly committed to the people it serves. Because of the farmworkers' schedules and circumstances, they were unable to access the services of the local One-Stop Career Center. HDC provided a creative solution that now allows them to access the services/training they need to find employment. By building partnerships both with local employers and other service providers, HDC equips its clients with the tools to be successful."
The award includes a grant of $24,000 for a program to aid farmworker adults in establishing personal plans and goals, gain literacy or English language skills and eventually earn a GED. Students will learn how to use the computer to find a job, write a resume and prepare a letter of application.
Classes at HDC housing sites are popular. About 1/3 of HDC's residents enroll each year.
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Rachel Lowenthal, bike winner
Bike Winner
The happy winner of the new Seasons BBQ Benefit Bike Drawing is Rachel Lowenthal of Portland. Rachel works with adult victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault through the El Programa Hispano program of Catholic charities.
Rachel didn’t own a bicycle and said she was pleased to now have a two wheeler, complete with helmet, bike lock, bike pump and carrier. “The new bike is great. Thank you so much! Now I can bike around my neighborhood,” she said.
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New Seasons Benefit and Bike Winner
Farmworker children were able to go to camp this summer due to benefit BBQ's held at New Seasons grocery stores in the Portland area.
The $4,654.35 raised is paying for kids' programs, including two science camps (see story). Money also pays for the Kids Judo Club and other after school children's activities.
Read More
The benefit was a fun, worthwhile event involving 53 volunteers working at four different locations. (Send an email to learn how you can volunteer with the HDC.)
The HDC appreciates volunteers who tell the community about how the HDC's provides services and homes to farmworker families. The low wage toil of these men and women allows many of us to enjoy fresh, local vegetables and fruits.
We extend a big THANK YOU to the volunteers who staffed the BBQ benefit at New Seasons. Assistance came from the Ojukan Judo Club, St. Pius X Parish, St. Juan Diego Parish, the real estate agents of Prudential Northwest and HDC's staff and board.
Shift leaders included Eric Airriess, Nick Gerbracht, Cheryl Hilbert, Katherine Krueger, Gaye Leidelmeyer, Greg McMurray, Pat Pitz, Mario Roxas, and Don Ruff.
In addition to housing, HDC provides camps, clubs and after school activities for children.
Parents can take literacy, English, math and computer classes to increase their job skills.
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Meet Resident Carolina Guiterrez
HDC resident and working mother sees education as a way up
When Carolina Guiterrez heard that the Housing Development Corporation was sponsoring a science camp this past summer, she made sure to enroll her 8-year-old daughter, Brenda, because Guiterrez believes education is key to her children's future.
That same belief is motivating Guiterrez to try to keep her 18 year old daughter, Crystal, a recent graduate of Hillsboro's Glencoe High School, at home. Like many teens, Crystal wants to be independent. She hopes to get a job so she can move into an apartment before going to college. But Guiterrez is encouraging her daughter to "at least take a couple of classes at Portland Community College" while she lives at home, works and saves money for school. Guiterrez was already a mother at Crystal's age. She hopes her children will have options in their teens, 20's and 30's different from her own.
One of the luckier breaks for Guiterrez came in 2002 when she, her husband and three kids were able to move into HDC's newest property, the Jose Arciga apartments in Forest Grove. The family had been renting a two-bedroom house that cost $200 more a month. Living in a three-bedroom apartment now means Crystal has her own room and there's money available to help pay for college or spend on clothes and shoes for the kids.
Guiterrez, 37, grew up in Llano del Tigere, a town of about 300 people in Northwest Mexico, working along side four brothers in her father's fields while four sisters stayed at home helping their mom. Guiterrez could have been doing house work, too. Her father said the choice was hers. But she liked being outdoors, did well with physical labor, and knew that unless she helped on the land, her dad would have to hire someone else and that would take income away from the family. Even as a child, Guiterrez was practical.
That same practicality and loyalty to family is guiding her choices today as a wife and working mother of three in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Ten years ago, Guiterrez and her daughter, Crystal, who was eight at the time, left Mexico to be with a sister and a brother in Hillsboro. Since then three more brothers have joined the Hillsboro wing of the family. When Guiterrez first arrived in Oregon she worked for $4.25 per hour cleaning tables at Mc Donald's. It's the kind of job that many Americans might be ashamed to take, but Guiterrez held her head high, appreciated the steady raises, and stayed with that job for five years.
"My sister brought my daughter to see what I did. She was a little embarrassed for me, but I told her not to be. I said: 'it's stealing that is embarrassing, work is not embarrassing. If someone pays me, I'll clean their shoes. I'm not ashamed to work and earn money."
Guiterrez married Enrico (Jorge) Guiterrez, a driver at Oregon Berry Packing, had two more children and continued to hold a job. Throughout it all, she's found the harder she worked, the better her career became.
The central location of the new HDC Jose Arciga apartments in Forest Grove is convenient to the public transportation that allows Guiterrez to get to work. On weekday mornings the tall, slim woman, dresses in professional clothes, boards a 4 am bus in Forest Grove and takes it to the Max train's most westerly stop in Hillsboro. She then travels to downtown Portland where she works as a cashier in the restaurant where she once was a cook, takes inventory, and fills in when the manager is on vacation.
While Guiterrez likes her job, she hopes her children Crystal, Brenda, and Jorge, 4, have even better choices.
"I want my kids to go to college, and finish. Whatever they like to study is fine," she says.
"I'm really, really lucky to have what I got, but I want them to have better opportunities, opportunities that I don't have." With no GED and a ninth grade education, Guiterrez finds that her employment choices are limited. But the story for her children, she believes, can be different.
Brenda, a soccer, basketball, baseball and wallball playing third-grader, says she'd like to be a teacher, or a "pet nurse", meaning a veterinarian, when she grows up. Her mom says: "whatever they like is fine." At school Brenda prefers art projects and stories about dinosaurs.
Guiterrez is raising her children to have the best of both the Mexican and American worlds. As a Mexican, family comes first, and Guiterrez admits she'd like to keep her children near her, even after they graduate from high school. "But if they want to move out, they can," she said. "I just want them to stay close to me."
The family celebrates both American holidays and traditional Mexican holidays, including Mexican Mother's Day, which is always the 10th of May, as well as the American Mother's Day on a Sunday in May. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12 and the Feast of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple on Feb. 2 when children are blessed at church are also cause for celebration and a special dinner at home.
"I like tamales the best," Brenda piped up at the mention of food. While the children are exposed to the variety of cuisine that makes up the American diet, at home they want their mom to cook Mexican food.
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