For the Young Ones : New Agency Helps Homeless Latin American Youths

When the white van pulls up and stops, young men looking for work swarm around it expectantly. But the driver, Camilo Castillo, quickly dashes their hopes.

“No, there’s no work,” he tells them in Spanish.

Instead, Castillo and his companion, Father Richard Estrada, offer them warm burritos and fresh coffee. They also pass out small slips of paper with the address and phone number of the Echo Park headquarters of Jovenes--a new social service agency that focuses on one of the city’s overlooked problems: the rising number of young homeless immigrants from Latin America.

Estrada, a member of the Clerician order, previously worked with Father Luis Olivares in the Central American sanctuary movement and in 1990 became director of Angel’s Flight, the Catholic Charities’ shelter for runaways. He said he left the agency last summer to found Jovenes after he encountered resistance to his growing interest in what he sees as one of the city’s most pressing social needs.

Although there are no exact figures, immigration experts agree that over the past several years an unprecedented number of Central American and Mexican teen-agers--fleeing war or poverty in their own countries--have come to the United States, either alone or with other young people.

These young men and women, numbered by some in the thousands, have their expectations of finding work quickly dashed. Despite long waits at hiring corners, they have trouble finding work, and their nights are often spent sleeping in parks, under bridges or in crowded apartments.

During the year and a half that Estrada was at Angel’s Flight, many of these immigrant youths found their way to the shelter.

Estrada welcomed them but said he thought that some of his supervisors were concerned about the shelter’s new direction and wanted him to pay more attention to its traditional mission of working with American runaways.

Estrada said conflicts also arose over paintings created by the young Latino immigrants in an art workshop at the shelter. Many of the pictures depicted the extreme violence they had seen in their homelands. Other works had explicit pornography. When some of the works were displayed at a public art show at Barnsdall Park last March, Estrada said, church leaders were aghast.

In June, Estrada resigned from Angel’s Flight. Three months later, he received permission from his order to form his own organization that could work exclusively with immigrant youth.

Catholic Charities officials say that they did not oppose Estrada’s efforts to work with the immigrant teen-agers. But Susan Weight, assistant to the executive director of Catholic Charities, said some officials wondered whether his efforts were stretching the agency’s resources too thin.

He saw a need that was beyond the scope of the services that Angel’s Flight could offer,” Weight said, noting the complex legal, emotional and language problems faced by undocumented immigrants. “The problem he was incurring with these children was that they are beyond the resources available.”

Weight said she is pleased with Estrada’s decision to strike out on his own to address the problem closest to his heart.

“I think that what he is doing is just wonderful,” she said.

Through Jovenes, a Spanish word meaning young people, Estrada wants to provide food, shelter, counseling and work for these youths, who, he said, are routinely turned away from other programs because of their age, immigration status and language barriers.

“These kids are left out in the cold,” Estrada said.

Since September, Estrada has been occupied with the tasks of agency building: looking for an office, hiring staff and fund raising.

With $50,000 in seed money from a private donor, he rented an Echo Park office on Sunset Boulevard, just a few blocks from downtown Los Angeles. A Christmas fund-raiser and other appeals have brought in $20,000 in contributions.

The fund-raising work continues--Estrada estimates that it will cost $250,000 to run Jovenes for one year--but the program is now in full swing.

Estrada hopes to build the agency’s clientele through the 3-week-old van outreach. Although he usually works in the Jovenes office, doing counseling and fund raising, Estrada rode the van one recent morning along with Castillo, the outreach director. Castillo, a journalism student at a university in El Salvador, fled the country in fear of his life six years ago, he said.

Castillo now spends his mornings roaming Los Angeles in search of hiring corners, where he distributes food and talks to the men there about their troubles.

At these corners, Castillo also passes out Jovenes flyers, hoping that young workers will come to the office and spread the word of the organization to others.

In his first two weeks on the job, Castillo said, seven young men he met on hiring corners have found their way to the Echo Park office in search of other services. He also distributes the food to young and old alike.

“When you bring food, it’s a means of building confidence,” he said. “Then they will tell you, ‘There are two boys living on the street and they need help.’ ”

On the front door of Jovenes’ Echo Park storefront office, a sign in Spanish also informs passersby that they can have a free meal every day between 3 and 5 p.m. Some of the food is bought with money from a $17,000 United Way grant, and the rest comes courtesy of local volunteers.

Once in the door, the hungry are offered other services. Two volunteers teach weekly English classes, and a staff member offers daily art workshops.

On Feb. 8, the center held its first workshop on surviving in Los Angeles, a course likely to be repeated twice a month. Estrada also hopes to eventually hold regular health and AIDS prevention workshops.

Most important, clients receive personal counseling from a social worker who can help them find shelter and steer them to educational programs, free legal clinics and immigration counseling to help them establish themselves in this country.

However, Estrada said the agency is less concerned about the technical aspects of immigration than it is with helping people in need.

“For me, it’s a waste of time just to provide one meal,” said Haydee Sanchez, a Salvadoran social worker who is one of the three full-time staff members at Jovenes. “Just to provide food is like I’m not doing anything.”

Sanchez, who was a caseworker at the social service agency El Rescate for several years, said she has matched up six children under 14 years old with families who agreed to take them in. She is currently looking for families for two more young boys.

“I don’t believe that a minor belongs in a shelter. They belong in a home,” Sanchez said, in heavily accented English. “It doesn’t matter if the shelter is beautiful and has all the facilities. It doesn’t matter if a family is not rich and can afford only a couch for the minor. There is a big, big difference between a shelter and a couch with a family.”

Among the six children Sanchez has placed was an 11-year-old boy from Guatemala who came here with his 19-year-old brother, fleeing political repression. The 19-year-old had hoped to work and support the child but found he could hardly earn enough money to feed himself.

The two were living under a bridge when they came to the Jovenes office. Sanchez first placed them both in a shelter. Then, working with her network of church contacts, she found a home for the younger boy.

Older children, Sanchez said, are generally placed in shelters and are encouraged to enroll in education programs.

Despite the difficulties they have in the United States, Estrada said, many of the young people are determined to remain in this country rather than face the shame of returning home after an unsuccessful venture.

Although the priest said he tells them that “it’s much better to go back and be with your families, even if you don’t get along,” many refuse, or cannot return because their homes and families have been devastated by war. In that case, Estrada said, he will do whatever he can to help them to be successful here.

“They want education; they want to learn something,” Estrada said. “They are intelligent and they have character and tenacity--all the elements to be real leaders in the community.”