2002 Celebration
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2002 Celebration |
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Programs AHORA/Bridge to the Future
Program Descriptions AHORA/Bridge to the Future Contact: Nelson Salazar Orchard Foundation AHORA is a bilingual-bicultural youth enrichment program that fosters academic achievement, develops leadership, and enriches cultural awareness among Latino youth in Cambridge, Mass. The program’s mission is to provide youth with the tools to develop their potential and make positive changes in their personal lives and in their community. AHORA provides students with opportunities to affirm their culture, increase their pride in being Latino, and interact with Latino role models and mentors. It is sponsored by Concilio Hispano de Cambridge, Inc., a nonprofit agency founded by and for Latinos in 1969. AHORA works with communities through innovative methods in education, prevention, intervention, rehabilitation, and community organizing. AHORA is housed at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), a diverse high school where Latino students account for 16 percent of the student body but only 7 percent of the teaching staff. Latino students attending CRLS live in three distinct cultures: Latino culture with the language and heritage of their parents and family; the dominant culture of the United States, in which English is a necessity for economic and academic success; and hip-hop culture, the language of the streets and school hallways. Students must negotiate these cultures and bridge the gaps among three different worlds while remaining proud of their Latino heritage. They encounter the difficulty of going home and essentially being back in one's native country, with its food, language, music, and styles of interpersonal relationships. They face different forces on the streets and still another set of standards in the classroom. With AHORA, Concilio Hispano has created a unique model that has a direct, positive impact on the way students relate to their school and the way the school relates to Latino students and their families. AHORA provides the following programs: Great Brook Valley Health Center Child Care Program Contact John P. Hess The Child Care Program of the Great Brook Valley Health Center seeks to increase clients’ access to primary health care by providing on-site child care at no cost. This program is vital to the young families who come to the community health center for care. During medical, prenatal, dental, mental health, podiatry, optometry, laboratory, WIC, HIV counseling and testing, childbirth classes, parenting classes, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous groups, and other services, the center’s clients are able to keep appointments and more likely to obtain these vital services. Poverty, lack of transportation, lack of interpreters at health and human service providers, and lack of cultural sensitivity compound the barrier of lack of child care. Yet experience has shown that providing child care can make a difference in the health and quality of clients’ lives. The center began the program in the mid-1980s when an analysis indicated that child care was a big factor in missed appointments. The staff discovered that patients could not afford babysitters, and their friends and relatives were often working or too busy to watch the children. The center obtained financial support from the State Department of Public Health to offer the services, and as the program grew the center received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Bureau of Primary Health Care as part of a larger program designed to increase public housing residents’ access to primary care. Parents who wish to use the health center may leave their child in the child care room during their visit. Typically, a woman with two or three small children can have her own physical exam or a checkup for one of the children without worrying about leaving her other children at home or, as was done before our program, taking those children into the exam room with her. A bilingual child care worker supervises the room, provides structured activities, and keeps in contact with parents as necessary. The room is under the direction of a pediatric nurse who also conducts observations of children to perform developmental assessments.
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