Foghorn April 28, 2016 Mtg -Puente Exec. Dir. Rita Mancer

Rita inherited her job from Kerry Lobel who preceded her as the executive director. Kerry remains with Puente and now she focuses on housing, healthcare and childcare. Puente partners with other organizations to provide services. For example, they work with our own Andrew to run a summer program at YMCA. Puente provides the transportation and the junior counselors to provide summer camp experiences for 80 children for one or two weeks.

Rita was born in Mexico City and grew up in Baja California. She became familiar with Rotary programs during her time in Baja.

She talked about some of the issues they are addressing on the coast. One major concern has to do with pesticide exposure for children. Housing costs are such that people are required to share housing. Trailer rentals range from $150-$1000 per month and oftentimes several families have to share one trailer. One of the things they been working on doing is to move programs from their facility to the camps. They have been running parenting classes and storytime classes off-site. She talked about trauma and the fact that there is this undercurrent of fear in the Latino community which stems from immigration issues. Virtually every family that she has met came to this country because they were fleeing extraordinary poverty or were fleeing for their lives. She addressed the need that we have for immigrant laborers and the fact that we must figure out a way to accommodate those workers. She cited the example of Canada's guestworkers program. Besides working with the families, there is also a need to work with the men whose families are still south of the border.

Puente runs a number of programs for youth in the community. 30 to 40 youth participate in their summer program where they receive academic support (mentors and tutors) and work experience. They have partnered with Wells Fargo and this summer they are working with 38 kids. They track the children's savings and for the majority the money they earn goes to school, a car (a necessity on the south coast) or to help the family. They're currently looking for summer internships for young adults in the areas of engineering, nursing, culinary and STEM. They are also looking to set up short internships so that people can perhaps have a student shadow them for a couple of days.

Through the Silicon Valley foundation they have been offering English classes to over 100 adults. In order to offer classes to adults they also have to offer childcare. They've recently established a program called Café Night in which they get together informally over coffee and have unstructured conversations in English. Puente also partners with the school district to provide reading volunteers.

Obviously, there was a real need for assistance with immigration issues. To address that need, when Kerry Lobel was the executive director, she sent Rita off to earn her paralegal certificate so that she could begin an immigration counseling program. 23 kids recently obtained work permits thanks to the Obama initiative. One interesting consequence was that when those kids obtained work permits their academics improved.

As someone from the audience noted, Puente has come along way from bicycles and blankets.