Youth Alive! – Margaret's Place and Camp St. Francis
Youth Alive! is a comprehensive program of personal growth, service, and educational and recreational opportunities. Youth Alive! is also a youth group organized around the vision of the specialness and sacredness of every person and of their related responsibility to live lives of passionate commitment to themselves, their families, their communities, and to the building of peace and justice. It is an interfaith program that does not promote any one spiritual belief, but acknowledges the spirituality common to all of us.
Youth Alive! is an outgrowth of nearly twenty-five years of work in Camphora and Jimenez farm labor camps near Soledad. Other camps have been part of this program, but due to staff limitations, we are currently only working in Camphora and Jimenez. We work primarily with the children of farm workers, and more recently, have helped to facilitate English as a Second Language classes for their parents. We serve approximately 200 youth, from preschool age through high school age, in both camps. The program has an open enrollment. We take a census annually in late October.
Margaret’s Place is our physical site in Camphora. The primary objective of Margaret’s Place is to provide a safe after-school enrichment opportunity for children living in the two Soledad Camps served by the Franciscan Workers. In addition to helping children with homework, learning to read, and an art club, individual home tutoring is also occasionally offered.
Camp St. Francis provides educational and recreational field trips for “disadvantaged” children living in Monterey County. Summer camp and other camping opportunities are also offered to these children. The children are showered with positive attention and affection, in accordance of our theme “You are special”.
Since 2005, we have also worked with neighborhood children in the Alisal area of Salinas, offering computer assistance and art projects on Saturdays. This was a natural outcropping of our Companions of the Way Community residence on Jefferson Street where neighborhood children showed an interest in the activities of the Community and a desire for weekend activities themselves. We currently serve 20 neighborhood youth with two volunteer adults from the Community.
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Soledad Street Art Camp
This year, a Summer Urban Arts Camp is being sponsored by Artistas Unidas and the Franciscan Workers at 14 Soledad Street (a couple doors down from Dorothy’s Place). The Summer Urban Arts Camp is for any child that wishes to participate but is intended to draw out children in the Chinatown neighborhood for a summer arts experience.
Children are guided through expression in several mediums, including paint, mosaics and cultural masks. Our Summer Urban Art Camp is held every Friday in July and is free to children ages 7 through 17 (parent permission slips are required).
Don’t miss our end of season ART EXHIBIT and reception on August 25th, at the Soul on Soledad Festival!
For more information, please contact:
Patricia Sullivan (Artisitas Unidas) (831) 758-9126
Mia Ferreira (Franciscan Workers) (831) 776-8038
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
DONATE or VOLUNTEER
GOALS
• Complete renovations for mobile computer lab, including acquisition of generator
• Establish Margaret’s Place as a CSUMB Service Learning site
• Re-apply to Monterey Peninsula Foundation and other foundations to support continued after school and summer camp program
• Hold summer camp June 26th-29th
• Involve teens in micro-enterprise/silk screen printing venture with Peter Maurin Work Co-Op
• Re-instate health/mobile clinic in the next year
• Network with Marks Ranch
• Increase the number of volunteers/mentors/tutors
• Continue field trips
• Schedule college trip to Southern California for summer 2007
• Organize art shows for the children
• Increase the number of weekly visits
• Expand Community to serve as primary staff of Margaret’s Place
CELEBRATIONS!
The mobile computer lab is complete, thanks to Tom Cimino and US Logics! The mobile computer lab has ten laptop computers that are used with learning software that is appropriate for different grade levels. It provides a invaluable service especially for high-school students in the camps, who are often required to do reports on a computer, but don’t have access to a PC in their isolated labor camp locations.
Summer camp at San Lorenzo Park really rocked this year! Due to an incredible response to our Camp St. Francis appeal, thirty five children had a terrific camp experience during the week of June 25th.
We have also been developing a “leadership” team of teens at the camps to assist with the camp and after school program and to help them find value and meaning as well.
VISION
The vision of the Franciscan Workers is that of cultural transformation and the building of the New Creation. Peace and Justice are not words meant for pretty posters on our walls. Rather, they must become vitalizing atoms mixed with the oxygen in our blood. There is no other way for women and men of holy daring to live! Cultivating the imagination of possibilities and firing our daily lives with the passionate practice of love is our gift to the children of the world. If we do not do this for them, then who will?
POSSIBILITIES IN ACTION
Roberto’s story
My name is Roberto Chavez and I was born in a small village called Las Jicamas in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. It has over five thousand inhabitants and they all depend on the rainy season for sowing corn and beans. Every year many of the men of the village say good-bye to their families in the spring to work in El Norte, as they call the United States. For over 35 years, my father left the town during spring and returned early winter. He worked in the endless strawberry and lettuce fields in the Salinas Valley of California, leav¬ing his wife and children behind.
My father came to the US in the fifties as a bracero worker, not because he wanted to, but be-cause of the situation his family lived in. Living in poverty, in an adobe house which he built with the ceiling almost falling on us, was not easy. During the rainy season, the house leaked like a colander. It was impossible to find a job in the village that would pay a good salary to feed a family of seven. These living conditions forced my father to immi¬grate to El Norte.
For my father and my three older brothers the most significant benefit that they obtained by com¬ing to the US was the Immigration Reform and Con¬trol Act of 1986 through which they obtained legal status in the United states. Thanks to the IRCA, in 1986 my father was granted legal residency. Now, my father did not have to risk his life crossing the Rio Bravo illegally to get to the United Sates.
On December 20, 1992, my journey to El Norte began. My father finally saved enough money to immigrate my family to California. Like most immi¬grants we crossed the US-Mexican border illegally with the help of a coyote. It took us two intensive days to cross La Frontera. The border that once took my father away from my family now would no longer separate us. It was time to start a new life by celebrating Christmas Eve in Soledad, Califor¬nia.
When I first came to the US, I had many fears. One of my fears was attending a new school and not being able to speak English. I still remember how confused and scared I was during my first week of school. My fears grew even greater after seeing how the Mexican-Americans discriminated against Mexicans. For the first time, I felt ashamed of my own people because Mexicans were fighting against other Mexican Americans. They called us different names like "mojados" (wetbacks). They thought they were better than Mexicans just because they were born in the US. I did not feel safe in school.
Learning English was not easy for me. When I was in school, I felt confused in class because I did not understand my teachers. For the first two months, I did not do my homework because the directions were all written in English and I did not know how to read in English. I wanted to go back to Las Jicamas where all the people were friendly with me. I wished I were in my old school where all my teachers spoke my language.
Living in an old bracero labor camp became an obstacle for me to learn English. All the resi¬dents that live in the labor camps are farm workers who do not speak English. Sometimes, when I tried to practice my English skills with my friends, but they made fun of me because they said that I wanted to become a "gabacho," an Anglo. My friends did not understand that I wanted to succeed in life by speaking two languages.
It is sad to say, but in the past thirteen years only six teenagers that lived in the labor camps have graduated from high school and attended a college or a university. I am one of six teenagers who have graduated from high school and attended a four-year university. Almost thirty percent of the children that live in these two camps do not finish high school. Most of the students drop out of high school during their freshman or sophomore year to work in the fields with their parents.
Most of the children that live in the labor camps are not legal residents. I think they drop out of high school because they know that they cannot attend a university after graduating from high school. I was lucky to receive my green card right after gradu¬ating from high school. Being a legal resident has opened a lot of doors for me.
Secondly, teenagers do not attend college after graduating from high school because their parents do not have money to pay for their education. Their parents work in the fields and they barely earn enough money to pay the house bills. Teenagers who are not legal residents cannot apply for schol¬arships because they do not have a social security number. I have known a lot of people who have won a lot of scholarship money, but they cannot claim the money because they are illegal residents.
The Franciscan Workers in Salinas have been striving to do something to help migrant families at Jimenez and Camphora labor camps. They have seen the poverty in which these migrant families live. For many years they helped the families by giving them food and clothes. They also saw the necessity of having an after school program, "Margaret's Place," to help the children with their homework.
Margaret's Place invited college students to talk to the children at the labor camp about college. The Franciscan Workers knew that the children needed motivation and that the only way they were going to get it was through the voices of these col¬lege students.
They also saw the need of having a library at the camp, so they added a small library to the after school program. All the books were not new, but they were very educational and fun to read. I per¬sonally enjoyed reading one or two books every day I attended the program. They also added a computer lab in the after school program (which is now a mobile computer lab). Thanks to them, my reading skills improved. Having computers at the after school program was great because sometimes we (the high school students) needed to use a computer to write our book reports or research papers. They also spent time playing soccer and baseball with us. I will never forget those years.
The Franciscan Workers also prepared educa¬tional field trips for the children during the year. For many years, I enjoyed attending all the different events and field trips that were organized for us. I never missed any of the educational field trips be¬cause they always took us to very interesting places where I learned a lot. They also took us several times to Dorothy's Kitchen in Salinas to learn more about "service to others". I enjoyed these trips a lot because the homeless people that we served at Dorothy's Kitchen were very friendly and interest¬ing to talk to.
Most of the children that live in the labor camps work in the fields during their summer break. I started working in the fields when I was only four¬teen years old. I had to wake up at 4:30 AM in order to dress and help my mother prepare the meal for the day. We worked ten or twelve hours every day. My parents allowed me to work in the fields because they wanted me to experience how hard it was.
When I was in my junior year in high school, I decided that I wanted to attend college after finish-ing high school. I started investigating the different colleges and universities that were close to home because I did not want to go far away from my family. The university that I liked the most was Cal State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB). I chose this university because they have a great Liberal Studies Department for people who want to become teachers.
Currently, I am working for the Soledad Unified School District teaching at Frank LeDezma Elemen¬tary School. After many years of hard work and the many challenges that I have overcome in my life, I have finally fulfilled my great dream. Now that I am a teacher, I want to help all those kids who live in the Soledad camps by helping them with their homework and by inspiring them to reach for their dreams.
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Daisy's Story
To find the beautiful and the sacred on the margins of society one must keep both mind and heart open. Camphora Camp is located on the edge of a dead end road next to Soledad Prison. The nondescript farm worker housing and gravel lot are just a blur to passerby on Highway 101. However, that was where we first met Daisy.
Daisy came to California at the age of fourteen, and was the first person in her family to attend high school in the United States. The challenges of a new school and learning in a new language were overwhelming, and she had no role models to follow. Her cousins around her age were dropping out of school and either getting married or working in the fields, but Daisy persevered and successfully graduated. After several trips to nearby community colleges and universities, Daisy found out she was accepted to California State University, Monterey Bay.
Now, nearly four years later, Daisy is set to graduate from CSUMB in June of this year. That very shy and timid youth we met years ago doing her homework on the kitchen table has blazed an inspirational trail for other girls in farm worker camps to follow. Daisy will frequently volunteer with us in our work with the children currently living in the camp where we met. Daisy's dreams include working with youth and advocating for girls and women.
