Latinas Reach Out in Little Sister Program : Positive Role Models for Girls Ages 6 to 16

Little girls hoping to be matched with “big sisters” in the East/Northeast Little Sister Program fill out a questionnaire that asks, “What is the best thing about you?” Frequently, according to interim director Sandy Mendoza, the girls can’t think of anything to write in that blank.

And that is what the program is all about, providing positive Latina role models for girls between 6 and 16 who, because of societal prejudices, alienation from the dominant culture or perhaps economic deprivation, may feel little self-worth.

$50,000 in Donations

After a shaky start, during which a well-meaning group of Latina volunteers learned that such a program takes funding and a full-time director as well as good intentions, the Little Sister program, sponsored by the Latin American Professional Women’s Assn. and modeled after the Big Sisters of Los Angeles, is under way with $50,000 in donations and six matchups.

On a recent evening, four of these big sisters and their little sisters--all of them meeting their counterparts for the first time--sat talking around a table at the organization’s headquarters, a converted firehouse in Lincoln Heights leased from the city for $1 a year.

The women, all single professionals, talked about shared girlhood experiences as Latinas--of struggle, of prejudice, of parental expectations for them, or lack of expectations, of the Latina’s other stumbling block to career success: the Latino man.

First Visit to a Mall

Their little sisters spoke of rather simpler things--the fun of sharing with these new friends cookie-baking, a first visit to a shopping mall, an hour or two in a museum, a helping hand with a school science project.

One thing that was apparent by evening’s end was that the lives of both big and little sisters are affected. Rosie Mares, 28, a government auditor who grew up in East Los Angeles as one of six children (her father, a high school dropout, was a golf course superintendent), said she has always felt “a little bit deprived” culturally because of her parents’ determination to raise “American” children who would fit in. Along the way, Mares said, “I kind of lost something. Ever since, I’ve tried to go back into my culture.”

When she signed up as big sister, and was matched with Veronica Rueda, 13, a Mexican-born seventh-grader living in East L.A., Mares was hoping that the commitment to spend meaningful time with a child three hours each week for a year would “enrich my life and enrich her life.”

Loving Understanding

What Mares and the other big sisters bring to the program, in addition to a heritage shared with the children, is what Sandy Mendoza calls carino , a word for which she could find no exact English equivalent. Loosely translated, it means loving understanding.

It means being a concerned friend, a good listener and an interested companion, not a bearer of lavish gifts. In short, Mendoza said, the program is looking for a woman who will “take the best in these little girls and try to bring it out, and maybe because of her that girl will be the person she can be 20 years from now.”

Latinas helping Latinas--that is the idea. The first matchup of big and little sisters was made about 10 months ago between Irma Cunes, 34, of Sherman Oaks, director of marketing for a life insurance company, and 8-year-old Daisy Lopez, a Lincoln Heights second-grader. “I wanted to give something to the (Latino) community,” Cunes said, “and I thought helping an up-and-coming young lady would be a good way to do it.”

Daisy’s need, in Cunes’ perception, was simply to have exposure to the world outside of East L.A. Daisy is one of six children; her father works in a factory by day and is a security guard at night, and her mother works as a housekeeper. “There are 11 people living in one room about as big as my bedroom,” Cunes said. “Their main emphasis is just to have the basics in life.”

Cunes and Daisy buy books and read them together. Daisy was born in El Salvador, moving here with her family only two years ago, and Cunes, who is of Mexican descent but was reared in Arizona by American-born parents, is able to help her with her English and grammar. Some of their time spent together is a bit more frivolous--Cunes learned, for example, that Daisy had never been to a shopping mall.

In the fall, both Cunes and Daisy modeled in a benefit J. C. Penney fashion show that netted $3,000 for the Little Sister Program. (Big and little sisters will again be models for a fund-raiser fashion show to be held April 13 at the Biltmore Hotel.)

Being about the age of Daisy’s mother, Cunes is careful not to put herself in the position of seeming to be a meddler or usurper of authority. Nor does she want to appear as a do-gooder dispensing favors to the less fortunate. At Christmas, she said, “I got all six kids (in Daisy’s family) gifts, and then one of the guys in the office contributed $50 and I bought some more.” But, she noted, in giving the gifts she emphasized she was enjoying the moment, too. “I’m from a large family and I really miss it.”

Education Emphasized

Cunes said, “I want Daisy to feel that she can be more, and have more. Most of all, I try to emphasize education.”

Maria Elena Franco, a single mother to a teen-ager and an 8-year-old, is big sister to Vanessa Lopez, 7, an appealing kindergartener with a missing front tooth and no English. The child, who came here from San Juan, Mexico, with her family five years ago, has two siblings; her father works in a trailer manufacturing plant and her mother, a full-time homemaker, is expecting another child.

Vanessa walked into the project offices on her own and filled out the forms in Spanish, answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” by writing doctor. Later, her younger sister applied; she wants to be a lawyer.

Normally, Vanessa’s borders do not extend far beyond Lincoln Heights. “Yesterday,” Franco said, “Vanessa and I went to Olvera Street. She’d never been to Olvera Street. I made it a little history class.”

‘We Can Share’

The uniqueness of the Little Sister Program, Franco said, is that “many of us grew up in this same area. We can share these experiences. Vanessa, for instance, is monolingual and culturally she has a different philosophy (from that of the mainstream). She needs someone who’s sensitive to that.” Franco grew up in a Spanish-speaking home and, she said, “To this day my mother’s English is quite poor. My acculturation is really Hispanic.”

Franco, who now lives in Pasadena but grew up in the Whittier-La Habra area, understands the conflict within young Latinas who have parents with “old country ideas” about things such as male-female roles but in school “are dealing with peers who are allowed to do certain things.”

In her professional life, Franco also deals with these matters. She is on the staff of El Centro Chicano, an ethnic support center for Latino students at USC where, she said, “Daisy and Vanessa will be going one day.”

Veronica Rueda, 13, asked for a big sister because she wanted someone older to talk to, to share with. (Her only sibling is a younger sister.) A student at Nightingale Junior High, Veronica came here from Durango, Mexico, with her family five years ago. Her father, a stone mason, makes cemetery vaults, and her mother, a seamstress, works in a garment factory.

Her big sister, Rosie Mares, is corporations examiner (auditor) for the state Department of Corporations. Mares, who lives in Alhambra, grew up in East L.A. in a family of six children and considers herself “really fortunate” because her parents pushed education. (Indeed, her father went back to school as an adult and earned a high school diploma.)

Still, Mares said, she had little self-esteem until sixth grade when she was among those chosen to be jumped a grade ahead. Until then, she said, “I didn’t know if I was smart, or what.” From that day, she said, “I never felt I could not do anything.”

‘Where Is Everybody?’

Her second eye-opener was enrolling at San Jose State where, she remembered, “I was the only Hispanic in business classes. You sit there wondering, ‘Where is everybody?’ ” But San Jose was, on the whole, a positive experience. Having grown up without money in materialistic Southern California, she said, she had a somewhat skewed sense of values that she was able to rethink.

She emphasizes to Veronica that “there’s more out there than just material things. If she wants to be a lawyer, fantastic. If she wants to be a housemaid, fantastic, just so she cares about her own enjoyment of life.”

Lourdes Melendrez, 26, came to this area with her family from Mexico when she was 13 and she knows about racial discrimination. It is important to her that her little sister, Alma Gomez, 13, whose parents were born in Mexico and speak little English, grow up “thinking that she’s a very special person and she has a lot to offer and whoever does not want to accept that, well, it’s their loss.”

Melendrez understands the barriers frequently placed in the paths of Latinas who aspire to the professions. After graduating from USC as a biology major, she was accepted to the University of Utah medical school before deciding “I didn’t have to become a doctor to be someone I liked.” Her need, she said, was “to help people” and today she does that as a public health investigator for the county, working with convicted drunk drivers who choose rehabilitation rather than jail time.

Still, she hasn’t come to terms with the fact that her mother, a storekeeper who raised three children alone, discouraged her from pursuing her medical degree. “The attitude (toward women),” she said, “is ‘you can get married and be taken care of. Yes, you are talented but who needs that kind of trouble. Get married, have three or four children.’ ”

There was a certain irony, she noted. In Mexico, Melendrez said, “Our family would go around and take food and medicine to people. But when I wanted to do this (as a doctor) she didn’t understand.”

‘Too Young to Decide’

Lourdes said she will encourage Alma, who has expressed a desire to be a doctor, but “I don’t want to make a little copy of myself. I want her to explore her feelings. I don’t want to put my feelings on her. She is too young to decide on a career.” She wants Alma to meet women lawyers, women doctors, Latinas who are managing both careers and families, because she knows “it’s very difficult to choose that kind of career in a Hispanic family.”

Interim director Sandy Mendoza laughed and projected that Melendrez’s little sister “may convince her to go back to school.”

It’s possible. Alma is a serious, composed child who seems to appreciate fully the opportunity being afforded her by her parents, a hospital housekeeper and a seamstress, to have exposure to other cultures as a student at Porter Junior High in the San Fernando Valley, where she is bused from East L.A. under the city schools’ voluntary program.

Alma and Melendrez have visited the USC Medical School library together, they go to museums and Alma has visited her big sister’s family. “And she helped me out with my science project,” Alma added. “We had to build an E.T. I got a B-plus.”

Said Melendrez, “Alma’s going to have to survive in an environment that is probably very different from her family life. I’d like her to get some sort of handle on the outside world. I went through the system (life in a big university). I know it. It was tough for me. I can help.”

She added: “Teachers of Hispanic children say that (these children) are too open, too honest, too trusting. You expect other people to be the way you are and that is not such an asset when you get out into the business world.”

Teresa Jackson is, in truth, an imposter, as she likes to point out: She was reared in Argentina, she is president of the Latin American Professional Women’s Assn. of Los Angeles, which sponsors the Little Sister program, and she speaks fluent Spanish, but she is not a Latina. Her mother is Polish, her father is Russian and she was born in Germany. Her husband was born in Argentina, but to English parents.

Still, she feels “more Hispanic than anything else,” partially because of her closeness to the Latino community as community affairs coordinator for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. Because she was 16 when she came to this country 21 years ago, she understands, too, “the conflict that comes when you change cultures” in adolescence.

It is a confusion that Lourdes Melendrez perhaps described best: Growing up, she said, “I definitely thought I was two people. In Spanish, my name was Lourdes. In English, it was Lori, a name I didn’t relate to at all. When I was with my English-speaking friends, I only allowed them to see my American side. When I was with my Spanish-speaking friends, I only let them know my Mexican side. I didn’t know the real me.”

It was people’s perception of her, as a young Latina, that had to be dealt with, she said--”Not what I can do but what others like me have done.”

“Even our generation, growing up in East L.A., we don’t have that kind of acceptance” in the professions, Mares concurred. She and the others want it to be different for the next generation.

Dropout Earns Degree

Jackson is a success story. A high school dropout when she came to America, at 23 she enrolled in night school, earned her diploma and then a bachelor’s degree at California State University, Los Angeles.

She and the other women talked of other conflicts--that between staunchly traditional Roman Catholic parents and children who have strayed from the straight and narrow, that between macho Latinos and non-traditional Latinas.

“I find Hispanic men much more prejudiced generally,” Jackson said. Melendrez agreed, “I would like to marry someone who’s Hispanic and I can see that as a problem, because of the competition.”

Mendoza, who works for a private nonprofit Pico Rivera organization that conducts employment training for adults and youths, mentioned receiving only “token” support for the Little Sister program from the male-dominated Latino business community, noting that the major share comes “from our female counterparts and from Anglo men.” (Major contributors have included the Arco Foundation, Best Products Foundation, Bank of America and Gannett Outdoors.)

(It is perhaps significant that, until 1978, the Latin American Professional Women’s Assn. called itself the Los Angeles Bilingual Secretaries’ Assn.)

As a result of networking with other Latino organizations, publicity in the Spanish language media and word-of-mouth, Sandy Mendoza now has 25 girls waiting to be matched with big sisters. What is needed now are more big sisters. The “ideal match” is a Latina professional, she said--”We want to show them Latina faces. They don’t see them on TV, and if they do, it’s as maids.” (Interested women 21 and over may call (213) 227-9060.)

Mendoza, 33, is herself a success story--reared in East L.A. in a strict, male-dominated family, she was, she said, “always in trouble,” getting kicked out of school, running away--and now with a degree in public administration from Cal State and a program to run. Her colleagues in the Little Sister Program praise her ability.

As the matchmaker, she deals, too, with the girls’ families, making certain they are always offered the opportunity to meet the prospective big sister and ascertain that she’s the kind of person they want to have exerting influence on their daughters. There is sometimes parental resistance, she acknowledged, although “it’s not verbalized. We tell the parents they don’t lose control of their daughters.”

Though the commitment on the part of the big sister is for one year, Mendoza said, “I don’t think they’re going to call it quits at the end of a year.

Irma Cunes said: “I’m working six days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, but still it (being a big sister) is no burden to me. It’s the only recreation I have.”

Once a full-time director is found, Mendoza said, the program will be able to more effectively identify girls who would benefit from an adult woman’s guidance. She hopes, too, to initiate field trips and personal growth and motivational workshops for the girls.

Mendoza sees the Los Angeles effort as a pilot program. “I think it can work across the nation,” she said, “in Texas, Arizona, Miami, all the Hispanic melting pots. . . .”