Courses Give Immigrants Keys to New Life : Program teaches Latinos basic Spanish and English literacy. It also provides training in child care, clerical work and life skills.

Single, with a 2-year-old son, Anna Guillen came to Canoga Park last year to visit her mother--and she decided not to return to Mexico City. She spoke no English and couldn’t find a job here.

But Guillen enrolled in a literacy course run by BASE (Basic Adult Spanish Education), a nonprofit organization started five years ago to teach Latinos basic Spanish and English literacy. Now she works at the nearby El Pollo Loco, taking orders.

“The school was very important for my work,” Guillen, 25, said slowly. “I couldn’t have gotten the job without it. I’m taking summer school there--more English--and I like it.”

The program--which is based in the United Way offices in Canoga Park but has 10 learning centers in the San Fernando Valley and a total of 22 sites in the Los Angeles area--has graduated more than 3,400 students since its inception five years ago.

BASE is unique, according to Russell Sakaguchi, program officer at the ARCO Foundation, which has given more than $70,000 to the program over the last four years. The concept of teaching Spanish to non-literate Latinos, and then building on those skills by gradually teaching English and other topics, makes it different from the typical English as a Second Language approach, Sakaguchi said.

Many of the students have had little or no formal education and face the daunting task of learning to learn in a classroom setting at the same time they are trying to develop reading and language skills.

Classes range from basic Spanish and English literacy to courses in child care, clerical skills and life skills--including such topics as starting a checking account, getting a driver’s license and dressing for a job interview.

BASE was the brainchild of executive director Virginia Rafelson, 62. She had been working for 10 years as the director of cultural affairs for the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, and she said she felt her efforts were not touching the true problems that Latinos were facing. The cultural events she scheduled were fun, she said, but she found that many people needed the basic literacy training before they could find decent work.

Among adult immigrants, Rafelson said, “more than 54% of the Hispanic community is illiterate, and I felt we had to start at the base of the problem.”

Rafelson left her job and started a home-based effort in West Hills to create a Spanish literacy program. She used her consulate contacts to create a board of directors that included the late Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum; Romeo Flores Caballero, the consul general of Mexico, and representatives of Sears, Roebuck & Co., UCLA, USC, Southern California Gas Co., Coca-Cola Bottling Co., the Los Angeles Federation of Labor and Blue Cross of California.

The free courses are taught mornings, evenings and Saturdays. Students hear about the program, she said, by word of mouth and from local churches.

BASE employs six full-time staff members and 40 part-time teachers and operated on a $600,000 budget last year. About 60% of the budget comes from state and federal English as a Second Language and amnesty program funds, and the rest comes from corporate donations, according to Rafelson.

The program also is supported by community volunteers. Rafelson has used her board members’ involvement and her own ability to cold-call corporate executives to get volunteer speakers for her classes.

Security Pacific, for example, has regularly sent staff members to teach students the basics of setting up a bank account and establishing credit, and Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills will be sending volunteers from its education department to teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the child-care students at BASE.

Rafelson said most of the students are women, who seem to be less ashamed to acknowledge their illiteracy and to seek to overcome it. But Rafelson is hopeful that the involvement of women will help BASE reach out to men and to children.

Lupe Carlin, a teacher who directs the BASE program in literacy and life skills held at Canoga Park Elementary School, said she sees the enormous gains in English fluency from the time students start the courses in October to when they graduate in June.

BASE graduates tell the faculty that the rewards of being literate are basic but exciting. One man brought Rafelson his paycheck to show her his $20 raise, earned because he can now read the instructions his boss leaves him on his night-shift factory job. A woman told Rafelson she can now write letters to her son herself, without depending on others to convey her thoughts.

Where to go

Location: Basic Adult Spanish Education, taught at 10 learning centers in the San Fernando Valley, at 22 sites in Los Angeles area.

Cost: Free.

Call: (818) 348-4771.